Aftershock: Briscoe
by Cirocco
Summary: 'Aftershock', mostly from Lennie Briscoe's point of view.
1. Execution

**CHAPTER 1: EXECUTION**

"Allegheny", said Lennie.

"York," Rey replied promptly.

"Kansas City."

"Yonkers."  They were playing Cities, a game where each player has to name a city that starts with the last letter of the last city named.  Rey was usually much faster at this than Lennie, and he almost always won.  Still, it passed the time.

Four hours to go till Attica.  Lennie thought for a moment.  "Syracuse."

"Edmonton," Rey replied before Lennie had even finished the word.

"N…" Lennie thought for a long time.  N cities became hard to think of after the first few minutes of the game. "Nassau."

"Oh, a U city… Utica."

"I already said Utica."

"Uppsala."

"Oopsy-what?  You're making that up."

"No, Uppsala, Sweden."

"I dated a Swedish girl once.  Ingrid, Inga… Ingeberthe."

"Engelbert?  You dated a girl named Engelbert?"

"Ingeberthe.  A… Albany," Lennie finally managed.

"What is it with you and cities ending in Y?  Youngstown."

"Didn't we just pass Youngstown?"

"No, we passed near Kingston.  Where do you get Youngstown from Kingston?  And anyway there's no rule says you can't use the name of a town you're going through."

Lennie looked out the window for a moment.  So different from New York.  So empty out here, little farms and small towns dotted along the I-87.  Even the so-called 'cities' just looked like big towns to him.  "You think they put this place far enough away from the rest of the world?  Out of sight, out of mind," Lennie muttered disgustedly.

"What's wrong with that?"

"How are their families supposed to come see them?  It's six, seven hours away from New York."

"So?"

"So what if you were in prison?  Wouldn't you want your family to come visit you?"

"That's why I wouldn't be in prison, Lennie.  If these guys gave a damn about their families, they wouldn't have committed a crime in the first place."

"Innocent people do go to jail, you know."

"Sure.  Usually 'cause they're innocent of the crime they were convicted of, but guilty of about twenty others."

Lennie was silent for a moment.  "Think Mickey Scott's family came to visit him?"

"Would you visit a piece of scum like that?"

"What, if your brother went to prison, you'd just forget him?"  Lennie challenged.

"My brother wouldn't go to prison," Rey said definitively.

"Isn't he the black sheep of the family?"

"That's just 'cause he played around on his wife and then got divorced.  He's not a criminal."

"Oh so in your family I'd be a black sheep too?"  Lennie asked, amused.  No surprise there.

"I didn't mean it like that.  You know my family's different from yours."

"Yeah, you're all a buncha holy rollers," Lennie muttered to himself.

"Catholic isn't holy roller," Rey's sharp ears had picked up his comment.

"Right."  Lennie was silent for a minute.  "Think Scott's family's gonna be at the execution?" he suddenly wondered.

Rey frowned, a faintly disturbed look on his face.  "I dunno."

"Ah, ten to one he never had a family anyway."

"Oh don't give me 'this poor guy never had love in his childhood, so it's OK for him to'-"

"I wasn't gonna say that!"  Lennie protested.  He decided to drop the subject.  No point talking to Rey about any of this.  Rey wore him out in the best of times when he went on a rant about the intrinsic worthlessness of the mooks they spent their life dealing with.  And today wasn't the best of times.  Just the drive to the execution was making Lennie feel uncomfortable.  He wasn't looking forward to actually being there. The fact that it didn't seem to bother Rey one bit was just another thorn in Lennie's side today, and a political discussion about prisoner's rights most certainly wasn't going to make him feel any better.

Lennie had never really thought of himself as any real political persuasion, but months working with Rey made him feel like he was one step away from being a card-carrying Communist or at the very least a member of the ACLU.  He remembered some comedian joking about a politician, calling him 'slightly to the right of the Sheriff of Nottingham'.  Whoever that politician was, Lennie would give him five minutes with Rey before he'd start feeling pinko too.

Not for the first time, Lennie missed Mike Logan.  Rey had grown on him in the last several months since they'd started working together, but it had been hard to develop a sense of camaraderie with a guy who hardly ever cracked a smile, let alone a joke.  Who was so clean he squeaked when he walked.  Who was so rigid it was amazing he could bend over far enough to put on his socks in the morning.  Mike had been so easy to work with – occasional disagreements, but overall, just a couple of guys doing their job, having a pretty good time doing it.  Mike knew how to have fun and be a cop at the same time.  He also knew how to face human failings and weaknesses, his own and those of the people around him, with humour and tact, without radiating palpable disapproval.  And since they had to deal mostly in human failings and weaknesses, Lennie considered that a pretty important skill in a detective.  A skill that Rey was completely lacking.

Then again, Mike had quite a temper and that was why he was now walking a beat on Staten Island.  Not that Rey was a poster boy for even-tempered self-restraint, but he'd never lose control enough to punch a politician in front of cameras.

And in some ways he wasn't that bad.  Like this morning, he'd apologized for having made some smart-ass remark about Lennie being a failure at marriage the other day.  To be honest, Lennie hadn't remembered the remark since he didn't register half the personal digs Rey threw his way, but it was still nice that the guy thought to say he was sorry.

"What city are we on?" Lennie remembered their game.  Back to neutral territory.

"Just passed Ulster."

"No, the game."

"Youngstown."

"New Mexico."

"That's not a city, that's a state."

"N… Nebraska."

"That's a state, Lennie."

"N… New Hampshire," Lennie suppressed a smile, yanking Rey's chain.  Not that hard to do, since Rey had almost no detectable sense of humour as far as Lennie could tell.

"Lemme save you some time.  Don't say Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina or North Dakota.  Those are all states."

"Thanks, Professor Curtis.  What is that, a party trick, you just rattle off all the N states just like that?  Here, gimme the A States."

"No problem.  Alabama, Arizona, Alaska… Arkansas.  And it's still your turn."

"You were president of the Geography club, weren't you?  N… Newark."

"Finally.  Killingworth."

"Halifax," Lennie grinned.  He'd stumped Rey with this one the last time they played.  Only time Rey had ever lost.

"Xunan," Rey shot back triumphantly.

"Shoo what?"

"Xunan, China."

"You looked that up!" Lennie was incredulous.  Of all the-

"Nothing says you can't look up cities between games."

"N… Naples."

"Sussex," Rey gave him one of his rare grins.

"Son of a bitch," Lennie said, laughing.  "You don't like to lose, do you?"

"You wanna go again?"

"Forget it.  There's only so much losing my ego can take."  He looked out the window for a while, then said, "Mind if I catch some shut-eye?  You can wake me up when you're getting tired."

"Sure, no problem."  Lennie leaned back and soon drifted off.

**ooo000ooo**

Hours later, just past Little Falls, he woke to the sound of some godawful music, something about Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Rey shaking his shoulder.  "Hey.  Lennie.  I'm starting to faze out.  You wanna take over?"

"Sure, sure," Lennie sat up, yawning, wincing at the music station Rey had picked.  Kids these days.  Headache Bloody Headache.  At least Rey had the decency to not listen to this crap while he was awake.  They switched places and Lennie automatically started searching for a radio station that played sixties tunes, about the only thing they could compromise on when it came to music.  As he drove, he noticed a sign.  "Oh look, a drive-through.  You want a coffee or something?"

"Yeah, decaf though, I'm gonna try and grab some sleep too."

Once they pulled out onto the highway again, Rey leaned back the passenger seat.  "You OK with the driving?"

"Sure.  I'll wake you up if I get tired.  It's only a couple more hours anyway."

Rey leaned his seat back and within minutes was fast asleep.  Lennie drove on, listening to the music – country, which he couldn't listen to if Rey was awake – and pondering why he was doing this.  Not reaching any conclusions.  No closer to figuring out how he felt about it.  But it kept his mind busy until they reached Attica.

Rey had said he was mostly going because he'd had some heavy discussions with his priest.  Lennie didn't know what passed for a heavy discussion with Rey, since he and Rey had never had one.  Rey didn't say much about personal issues, Lennie had found, and he hadn't said much about his reasons for going to the execution, but it didn't seem like he was avoiding anything.  Just that he didn't think it was worth talking or thinking about.  Mickey Scott deserved to die, period.  End of discussion.

Well, not quite end of discussion.  His priest felt nobody deserved to be put to death and he disagreed, but he agreed he should go to the execution and see it for himself.  There.  Period, end of discussion.

Lennie wondered if anything had ever been so black and white for him.  He remembered telling Rey once that he wasn't anti-death penalty, he was just practical – if somebody was already facing the needle over one crime, then they had nothing to lose, and he didn't want to face a criminal who had nothing to lose.

That wasn't entirely it, though.  Lennie was used to mulling over things.  He knew he was unsure about the whole concept of taking a living human being and making them a dead human being.  After all, he spent his entire working life tracking down and bringing to justice people who did just that.  It didn't seem right, somehow, to be part of the mechanism for doing the exact same thing.

Not that he was necessarily anti-death penalty.  He could see the sense in it – after all, if you kill somebody, you should probably expect some kind of punishment for it, and life in prison in many ways seemed much crueler than a quick, relatively painless death.

It even made sense from a practical standpoint; straight retribution.  You kill, you get killed.  Simple, easy.

But… he still wasn't sure how he felt about it.  Not quite right, anyway.  Well, maybe seeing it would help him make peace with it somehow, come down the fence on one side or the other.

He and Claire Kincaid had talked about it a bit, actually.  One of their last cases, he had gone in to give her an update on a suspect, and she had mentioned that she was going to the execution, asked him if he was going too.  He'd said yes, and they'd ended up talking.

He'd had to agree with her on many points.  She was vehemently opposed.  Found it barbaric, a miscarriage of justice, savage, appalling, and a dozen other extreme adjectives.  He shared many of her sentiments, if not to the same degree.  Claire was so passionate, so idealistic – a bit like a communicative and not so self-righteous version of Rey.  Lennie often found himself wondering how she and McCoy could stand even working together, let alone sleeping together.  Not that McCoy wasn't passionate, but he was totally lacking in the idealism and ethical conviction that so defined Claire Kincaid.

He wondered how McCoy and Claire were doing on their drive up to Attica.  Part of him wishing he could be a fly on the wall, since he was intrinsically curious, part of him glad he wasn't with them.  They'd probably bat about long words and eloquent arguments and bore him to tears pretty fast.  Or disturb the hell out of him, since Lennie had had quite enough experience with emotionally volatile romantic relationships in his marriages, and had sworn them off.  Even being near a fighting couple made him uncomfortable.  His relationships now were low-key, low-stress, low-commitment.  He couldn't imagine that was what McCoy and Claire had, especially right now, since he was well aware that McCoy had no problem whatsoever with the death penalty or his own role in securing it for people like Mickey Scott.

**ooo000ooo**

Finally.  Here they were.  Attica.

"Hey.  Rey," Lennie shook Rey's shoulder, thinking that like most people his partner looked younger when he was asleep.  Unfortunately, in Rey's case, this made him look about sixteen to Lennie.  Days like this Lennie felt way too old to be doing this crap any more.  Way too old to be dealing with criminals or working with a kid so young he made Lennie feel about a thousand years old and used up.  He wondered if he'd ever been like Rey – young, in love with his wife, devoted to his children, happy with his life and perfectly sure that what he was doing was right.  All the time.

No, not really.  He'd been a heavy drinker from way back.  There hadn't been a lot of youthful idealism in him, even at Rey's age.  By Rey's age he'd already burned through a first marriage and was diligently working on destroying a second, though he didn't know it at the time.

And as for always knowing that what he was doing was right… that was a laugh.  Not since he was about five, if ever.  Lennie didn't often concern himself with making sure everything was ethically just so – he just wasn't that anal about stuff like that.  Most of the time he just put one foot in front of the other and got through each day as painlessly as possible.  And if he did more good than bad on any given day, then he figured he was doing all right and he could sleep at night.  Mostly.  Always being sure you're right… whatever.

Besides, you don't get to be a fall-down drunk, leave behind two wives and two kids and almost destroy a career, because you're the kind of guy who always thinks he's right.  Not unless you're also seriously deluded.

Any more than you go to see some piece of garbage get poisoned and die if you're sure that you did the right thing by getting him there.  Van Buren hadn't come.  Hadn't seen the sense in it.  She was comfortable with her role in Scott's death and didn't see a need to spend twelve, fourteen hours in a car to validate her actions.

Then again, Rey and McCoy were also OK with it, and they were both making the trip, for reasons of their own.  Oh well, whatever lights your candle, Lennie thought.

They were ushered in.  Claire and Jack McCoy were already there, McCoy looking impassive and Claire looking like she just might be sick.  The Warden said a few words to introduce himself, welcomed them to the institution, and excused himself.

He could hear the people in the other room, the room where Scott was going to die. They were talking about Scott's last meal.  Lennie shuddered inwardly.  Last meal.  What would he have if it was his last meal?

"You're sure about the priest?" the Warden asked.

"I'm sure," Scott answered.  No surprise.  It would have surprised Lennie if he'd asked for one.

"How about the curtain?"

"What about it?"

"It's your choice, Mr. Scott.  Open or closed?"

"What would you like?"

"Closed."

"Then open the sucker up," Scott said, and Lennie sighed.  No surprise there either, Scott was bound to do the opposite of whatever any authority figure said.  Part of what made him such a fine upstanding citizen.  Lennie wouldn't have minded having the curtain closed, himself, although he had to admit to a certain morbid curiosity and a certain satisfaction in knowing that he hadn't driven all this way just to sit behind a curtain.

"Fine."  The curtain opened, and Lennie looked at Scott, strapped down, barefoot, arms out.

"Like damned fish in a barrel," Scott sneered, and Lennie felt a pang of sympathy for him.  As much of an asshole as Scott was, it was obvious that he was scared, trying to show as much bravado as possible in his last moments.  You kinda had to admire that level of brutish dignity.

"Want to say anything?" the Warden asked.

"Do it," Scott said tightly.

Two men opened a panel, turned the dials, then closed the panel, leaving the room.  Here we go, thought Lennie.  They just killed this guy.  Sure as anybody I've ever arrested, these two just killed a guy, in front of a roomful of witnesses, and nobody is ever going to punish them.  What makes this murder OK and the others I've worked on not OK?

Don't be a shmoe, Lennie, he gave himself a mental shake.  The law says this one's OK, because they're just doing their job.  Just like if you ever shot a perp, God forbid, that would be OK too.  Just doing your job.  And it's really not like Scott doesn't deserve it.

He glanced around the room, pressing his lips together, reminding himself of what Mickey Scott had done to deserve being in this room now, looking tense, staring up at the lights.  Reminded himself of the crime scene, the autopsy of Adele Saunders' battered, tortured body.  Scott was getting off easy.  His death wouldn't be the horror hers had been.

Didn't look like he appreciated that right now, though.

A green light went on, then a yellow light.  The heart monitor beeped steadily.  Lennie cleared his throat, once more realizing that he was about to watch a person go from living to dead.  And that he felt too much, too many conflicting emotions, to really be able to take his accustomed cynical step back from the situation.

He suddenly noticed that Scott's hand had relaxed.  The beeping from the monitor got more erratic, faster… then turned into a long continuous sound.  The monitor flat-lined.

Mickey Scott was dead.

The curtain closed.

That was it.

And what had he expected?  Some kind of revelation?

**ooo000ooo**

OK.  That's that, time to go home.  Ugh, six, seven more hours in the car.  He and Rey checked out of the prison, stopping to talk to McCoy about a case.  McCoy looked fine, no surprise.  A little quieter than normal, but that could just be due to the lateness of the hour.  Claire Kincaid… poor kid.  She looked like she was about to cry.  Probably the only person in this world who would cry for Mickey Scott.

He got into the car, passenger side.  Rey got in too and just sort of sat there for a while, until Lennie started to wonder.  Maybe his unflappable partner wasn't so sure about this after all.  Or maybe he was just tired.  God knew he himself was tired.  May as well grab another nap if he could.

Rey started the car and pulled out onto the highway again, driving in silence for about half an hour.  Not even the radio on.  Fine by Lennie.  Lennie leaned his head back on the seat, not bothering to close his eyes until he started to actually feel sleepy, not just tired.

"You OK?" Rey suddenly asked him.

"Yeah," Lennie answered automatically.  Why, didn't he look OK?  He felt OK.  About as OK as he ever felt.  No different than when they were driving towards Attica instead of away from it.  Maybe it was Rey who wasn't feeling OK.  Maybe he should ask.

"So…what did you think?" asked Lennie curiously.  Rey shrugged.

"He's dead."

"Justice is served?" Lennie asked, knowing Rey's answer.  Trust Rey to not change his mind.  In a way it was nice being around a person so predictable you could tell exactly how they were gonna react to just about anything.

"Guess so," Rey replied.  "One less repeat offender, anyway."

"Guess so," Lennie repeated quietly.

**ooo000ooo**

"Aah, hell of a way to spend your day off," Lennie sighed as he sat down in Van Buren's office in the morning.  They'd finally pulled into New York, both having taken turns driving and sleeping, doing pretty well despite the long trip.

"He just twitched, closed his eyes… case closed," Rey said.

"What did you expect, a dozen archangels strumming their harps?" Van Buren's no-nonsense question made Lennie shake his head at himself ruefully.  What the hell had he expected?

"Well Mickey Scott's got nothing to do with angels," Rey said.  Trust Rey to remind them that Scott deserved what he got.

"Who knows, maybe somebody, somewhere will learn something from this," Van Buren said skeptically.  Right.  Lennie knew better – Van Buren knew better too.  Lennie wasn't much into sociological studies but even he knew that the death penalty had never been proven to be any kind of deterrent for any kind of criminal behaviour.  Whether it was used to punish murder, abortion, adultery or marijuana use, the adoption of a death penalty in any country, any state, any society never made one single iota of difference in the frequency of the crime it was supposed to deter.

"Yeah, the thirty friends and neighbours who cheered when he ripped off Adele Saunders' skirt," Rey replied.  Like anybody could learn anything from Scott's death… especially the people who'd watched Adele Saunders' death happen and done nothing to prevent it.  As Lennie had watched Scott's death happen and done nothing to prevent it.  Lennie grimaced and stood up.

"Wanna go get some Chinese, Rey?  I guess executions make me hungry," he turned to leave Van Buren's office.

"Nah, actually I got some files I gotta finish up," Rey replied.  Of course.  Right back in the saddle.  Lennie should've known that nothing so minor as watching Scott die would make Rey miss a beat.  Although he'd looked a bit off in the car for the first little while.

"Watch out Lieutenant, this kid's gunning for your job," Lennie joked.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't get him any overtime," she smiled back.  They walked into the squad room to a round of applause led by Profaci.

"So where you guys going to, Disneyland?" Profaci asked, jovial as always.

"Knock it off, Profaci," Lennie muttered, leaving.  Profaci was probably going to act all hurt, but who gave a damn.  Right now Lennie felt old, out of sorts, and tired.  A bad combination when trying to be civil around Profaci when Profaci was in high good humour.

**ooo000ooo**

OK, where to now?  Lennie suddenly remembered that it was close to Thursday morning break time for his buddies from the 116.  A group of about eight of them usually got together at O'Haran's, a diner around the corner from the 116, even though many of them had moved on to other precincts.  It was a comforting ritual and you could usually count on at least four or five of them to be there.  O'Haran's it was.

**ooo000ooo**

"So me and Lennie're still in uniform-" said Reds.

"When was this, about the turn of the century?" asked Daugherty.

"Yeah, give or take," answered Lennie.  Nice to be around other old guys.  Shooting the breeze, comparing war stories, the dumbest, the weirdest, the spookiest, the funniest cases.

"We see this skel, got hair down to here, he hasn't showered in about two months-" said Reds.

"Sounds like my son-in-law," commented Jensen.

Reds continued without missing a beat.  "There was this string of vending machine robberies in the neighbourhood, and we knew this guy was hanging around but he wasn't there to do laps."

Lennie took over, "So anyway, we cuff him, we take him down to night court.  Now, he pleads not guilty on the vending machine thing and we don't really have anything on him except loitering-"

"-until the banana's wife shows up to post his 600 bail-" put in Reds.

"-in quarters!" the guys burst out laughing, "Thousands of quarters!" Lennie finished with a flourish, smiling at his friend's laughter, feeling a glow of nostalgia.  That's what police work was supposed to be.  Find some idiot who's doing something wrong, put him away, have a little fun in the process.  Lennie remembered Reds' face that day, turning purple with mirth, almost losing it laughing at this poor stupid guy and his poor stupid wife and their shiny mountain of damning evidence.  Remembered how his own sides hurt from laughing at the dumb schmuck, how the shy little bail clerk nearly wet herself giggling, how the halls at the precinct rang with hilarity as the story was passed around the next day.

"OK, gentlemen, time to see a little green here," Linda, the waitress, showed up.

"All right, I pledge ten dollars," Lennie put in.

"Ah, Ricky says yours is on the house, Lennie," she dismissed him, "Eh, after this morning the world's a better place, huh?" she smiled at him.

"A club soda on the house? Your boss is a real philanthropist. Another two cents plain for me, and the rest is for you, sweetheart," he smiled back at her.

"By the way, um, I get off at 5," she said to him softly, and left.  Oh really.  Lennie raised an eyebrow.  That was interesting…

"Six months I've been asking her out: Bupkus," Reds said in disgust.

"You didn't kill a rapist-murderer," Jensen pointed out.

"To Detective Briscoe," said Daugherty, raising a glass to him.

"Briscoe," Jensen toasted.

"Detective Briscoe," Reds added.

"Eh, eh, eh, cut it out," Lennie said, a little disturbed.

"Aw, Lennie's just pissed off cause he didn't get to shoot the SOB himself," Jensen teased.

"Yeah, right," Lennie responded, the glow of being with his old buddies suddenly fading quickly.  He looked down at his soda water and abruptly decided he didn't really want to have much to do with other cops today after all.  This was nice, being with the guys was OK, but not today.

OTB.  OTB would probably be better.  OTB could generally be counted on to provide a nice way to spend a few hours… not to mention a few dollars.   And who knew, today just might be his lucky day, he might make a little something.

**ooo000ooo**

"You're nuts, Lennie, Loch Ness is up for the race of its life," Joe told him.

"That's not what I'm reading here," Lennie looked at the sheet.

"He ran second last week in Florida."

"Yeah, on three weeks rest."

"I'm telling you, I got inside info on this one," Joe confided.  Agh.  Stupid Joe, always forgetting Lennie was a cop.

"Do I arrest you now or after you lose?"

"Listen to him, Fat Frankie over in Chelsea says if he gets five to one or better, he's a lock," urged Sam.

"The board says three to one," said Joe.

"Loch Ness, huh?  Sneaky Pete at fourth at Aqueduct," he told the cashier behind the window, feeling a little contrary.

"What are you, a masochist?  The horse is twenty-to-one," Sam protested.

"Story of my life," shrugged Lennie.  Not that big a deal.  He'd long ago learned the secret of enjoying OTB: consider every dime you bet to be lost.  Then, if you ever got any back, it was like a present.  Besides, Sneaky Pete had been doing pretty good lately.  No law said he couldn't win today, right?  What did Fat Frankie know anyway.

**ooo000ooo**

"Yeah, heh heh heh," Sam chuckled as the race ended.  Loch Ness.  Damn.  Sneaky Pete didn't even show.

"See what I mean? Never mess with Fat Frankie," said Joe.

"What's he got on the sixth?" Lennie asked.  His you've-already-lost philosophy didn't do so well on days when he lost as much as he had just lost.  Especially when he suddenly remembered his microwave had just finally given up the ghost and he had to get a new one.  Damn, why didn't he remember that before he bet?

"So we could share a cell, the three of us together?" Sam asked.

"Hey, guy's gotta pay the rent, no?" Lennie said, irate.

Joe started to ramble about a horse named Tippy-Top as Lennie spotted a vaguely familiar form approaching.  For a second he literally couldn't place her.  Then he did.

"Take Tippy-Top, for a C-note," he told Joe, facing his daughter.  Cathy.  What the hell?  Why would Cathy be here at OTB?

"Hey," she said casually.

"Hi," he replied, just as casually.

"Figured, you know, what the hell," she said, a little awkward.  What, she wanted to… what?  Say hello?  Talk to him?

"She wants you, Lennie," Sam remarked from behind him, in Sam's pathetic imitation of a bedroom voice.

"She's my kid, dipstick," Lennie informed him brusquely, and turned to lead Cathy out of OTB.

**ooo000ooo**

**Author's Notes:** By the way, if anybody out there watches 'Star Trek: Enterprise', you may have seen an episode where Captain Archer and Tripp played a game similar to Cities, called Geography, to pass the time and keep Tripp awake.  I swear I didn't get the idea from the show, though my partner and I did get a chuckle out of it because as we were watching 'Enterprise' I happened to be doing a final edit for this story on my laptop.  My parents and I used to play Cities to pass the time during long car rides through Southern Ontario.

And if anybody wants the actual script for Aftershock, e-mail me at

ciroccoj2002 at yahoo dot com


	2. Aftershock

**CHAPTER 2: AFTERSHOCK**

Later, sitting together at a restaurant, Lennie and his daughter cast about for conversation, Lennie trying not to show how confused he was by her presence and she trying not to show how uncomfortable she was around him.  Her own dad.  She could never figure out what to say to him.

This is ridiculous, she thought, I'm twenty-five years old and I can't think of anything to say to my father.  Of course it doesn't help that I don't know anything about his life and he doesn't know anything about mine, and we really have no shared history to speak of.

Cathy mentally gave herself a shake.  Come on.  Make an effort.  Be a grown-up.

"So, you're still a nut for tuna fish, huh?" Lennie asked.

"Yeah, only no one makes it like you with the chopped-up pickles," she said, grateful he'd started the ball rolling.  He laughed slightly.

"Did you get that Father's Day card I sent you?"

Oh yeah, Lennie thought, the super-early one.  Some cartoon of a cow or something, and inside a choice for him to check off: " Sorry for sending this so late Aren't you proud of me for sending this so early?"  He'd never really understood her sense of humour, but appreciated the card nonetheless.

"Mm, right, yeah, it's, uh, it's on the hall mirror.  I thought I called to thank you," he said.  Then realized that no, of course he hadn't.  He hadn't called her in… months, probably.  Hardly ever called her, because he always felt like he was intruding when he did.  Hardly ever thought of her, because when he did he just felt vague unease and guilt over having failed as a father.  But hey, at least here she was now.  "You know, you look great, sweetheart," he smiled at her.

She smiled back.  He seemed sincere.  She knew her father loved her, he was just really bad at showing it.  That was probably why she hardly ever contacted him unless something made her think of him, like seeing him on the news.  Oh.  There was something to talk about.  Cathy suddenly wondered about the execution he'd witnessed.

"Yeah.  So you actually watched it," she said, and he caught the reference.

"Yeah, well, we figured we should, you know."  Yeah, what a great decision that was.  Driving for twelve hours, mulling the whole time, and still mulling.  Waste of time.

"Can't get that girl outta my head.  I mean it was just a fender-bender, right?"

"She just happened to dent the wrong Camaro."  This was not what he wanted to talk to his daughter about.  He never knew what he wanted to talk to his daughter about, but it sure as hell wasn't what he did for a living.  "So how'd you know where to find me anyway?"  And why did you want to find me? he thought to himself.

"I called the station, they told me it was your day off, so I figured, hey some of my best memories are picking up your winnings at OTB," she smiled a little wryly.  Lennie sighed inwardly.  This was part of why he avoided Cath.  He loved her, wished they could have a closer relationship… but every time he got together with her he was reminded of how badly he'd screwed up fatherhood.  Just another part of his past that he'd had to come to terms with, and most of the time he was OK with it – or at least, he accepted it.  But it was still damn painful.  Like a bone that's as healed as it's ever going to get, but still hurts when you put any pressure on it.

"I was a hell of a Daddy," he said ruefully.  Taking a kid to OTB.  What kinda loser does that?  If he saw some scuzzball today with a little girl at OTB, he'd keep an eye out for child abuse or neglect.

"You were fine," Cathy said, more gently than she usually spoke to him.

He nodded in thanks.  Nice of her to say so, even though they both knew it wasn't true.  "When I could stand up," he said self-deprecatingly, taking a drink of his soda water.  Soda water and lime, the official beverage of the recovering alcoholic.

Mercifully, Cathy changed the subject.  "At work I uh, beat the doctors' butts at poker," she said, smiling proudly.

"Straight draw?" Lennie asked.  There were a few things he and Cathy could talk about without bringing up painful memories, and cards was one of them.  She was a damned good player, too.  Chip off the old block.

"It's the only way," she said as if it was obvious.

"Yeah, cause that wild card crap, that's strictly-"

"-for fraternity boys and blue haired ladies.  I know," she grinned at him.  Good old Dad.  So laid back about most things, but certain things had to be just so.  Like poker, and horses, and pool.  All games.  Too bad he wasn't a little more conscientious about real life.  She thrust that thought away.  You're here to make an effort, she reminded herself.

"Atta girl," they shared the smile.  "Guess I did a coupla things right after all, huh?"  Lennie felt a warm glow.  He paused and thought for a minute.  "Your mom OK?" she nodded slightly.  Finally he couldn't take it any more.  "Cath, you gotta know, it's driving me crazy trying to figure out why you're here."

She looked at him with that slightly disappointed look he hated, and the glow started to fade.  "Hey, I saw you on the tube, it's no big deal."

Damn, he thought.  The execution.  Great.  How to grow closer to your semi-estranged offspring.  Help kill a guy.  What does that say about your life?

Cathy looked down, suppressing a sigh.  Of course.  He had to ask if there was a reason.  Why would she just come see him, out of the blue?  Not like she was any part of his life or anything.

**ooo000ooo**

As they dug into their entrees, he had a thought.  "You didn't get married, didja?" he asked, half joking, half serious.  Would she have invited him to her wedding if she had?

Cathy's eyebrows went down slightly in a skeptical frown.  "Are you kidding?"

"Well you been living with that guy what, four years?"

"His name's Martin," she reminded him.  Four years, Dad.  Mom knows he likes strawberry soufflé and the Beatles and is scared of heights, and you can't even remember his name.

"Well, it's about time Martin grew up," he pointed out.  Martin, right.  Face like a weasel, but Cath seemed to like him well enough.  Time for him to settle down with her.

"He asked me plenty of times."

Lennie looked at her, surprised.  "You mean…"

"Why would I wanna get married?"

Lennie thought for a moment, stumped.  Sure, he was the first one to make jokes about marriage, but to hear his daughter dismiss it like that… it was disconcerting, to say the least.  Didn't all young women want to get married?  Wasn't it the guy who was supposed to run screaming for his freedom?  And… well, being called upon to defend the institution of marriage… it wasn't a position he was used to.  "Well there's plenty of reasons," he fished about for one.  "I mean, uh… kids, there you go," he said, relieved.  Young women wanted to have kids, right?

"Sure worked for you," Cathy said dryly.  He dropped his gaze.  OK, that one hurt.  She had a right to say it, but it still hurt.  There was a brief silence.  "What made you stop, anyway? Drinking."

Boy, was that ever not a subject he wanted to delve into with Cathy.  Ranked even higher than his job on the list of 'topics to avoid having a father-daughter chat about'.  "Ask me who got me started, much better story," he joked.

"I just assumed it was me," Cathy said quietly.

"Aw, come on," Lennie looked at her, genuinely disturbed.  Jesus.  She couldn't possibly think that, could she?

"I was seven years old when you stumbled outta my life. What's a seven-year-old gonna think?" she asked, trying to hide her disbelief at his surprise.  Had it actually never occurred to him that she would blame herself?  Had he actually never thought of that?  How blind could he be?  It was a well known truism to anyone who knew anything about children: kids are self-centered, they always assume things happen because of them.  For good or bad.

Guess he really didn't know a damn thing about kids.  No surprise there.

Lennie sighed.  OK.  Apparently his alcoholism was a topic he'd have to take off the avoidance list.  Just not today.  "I love you kiddo, but do me a favor, will ya? Today's _really_ not the right day."

"Stupid idea, me and my dad, having lunch, talking like a couple of grownups…" Cathy said a little bitterly.

He'd disappointed her again.  He always disappointed her.  "It's been at the top of my wish list too," he said, trying to reach past her disappointment.

"You know you could call sometime. I have a phone," she said softly.  She was willing to try, if he was.  After all, here she was, making an effort.  Didn't he see that?

Lennie shook his head.  Sure.  He should just call her, out of the blue, after guzzling away his right to be her father almost twenty years ago.  "Yeah, right. 'Hi kid, uh, arrested a coupla mooks today, uh, sorry I ruined your life, uh, what are you doing for dinner?'"

"OK, you win," Cathy stopped him.

Damn it.  Again.  He disappointed her, he hurt her, it was like there was nothing he could do or say that was the right thing.  Maybe… maybe if she hadn't shown up today he wouldn't be screwing this up.  If he wasn't tired, upset, feeling old and jaded and upset about the execution…

Maybe he could try to explain it.  "Look, it's just…" he took a breath, trying to figure out how to express this.  "I see dead people all the time, only, they're already dead when I show up, see, then it's my job to go find the bastard who did it," he paused.  "Now, this morning, I watched a guy get killed, and I wasn't supposed to do anything about it," he paused again.  And now, knowing that she'd only come to see him because he'd been on TV because of it… ah, hell, how could he explain it to her when he couldn't even explain it to himself?  "I dunno, I guess I'm better when they're already dead," he finished lamely.

Cathy sat back and looked at him, frowning slightly.  Nope.  That hadn't made any sense to her either, she didn't get it and she was still hurt.  Story of his life.  Of their life.

**ooo000ooo**

More food, more stunted bits of conversation, more uncomfortable silences.  Their conversation had slowly deteriorated until she was throwing out more and more digs at him, and he was countering with more and more half-joking comebacks, his only defense against her disdain.  Their regular relationship.

Somehow they'd gotten through an entire meal.  A big one.  One of the few other things they shared – both had enormous appetites.  Rey would've had a fit at the sheer volume of unhealthy food they'd both downed, Lennie thought, smiling to himself.

"What?"

"No, just… my partner's a kinda health nut – well, compared to me, anyway.  He'd probably have a heart attack seeing you eat like I do."

Oh, that was pretty funny, Cathy thought.  Point out the fact that she overate in difficult situations, that she had to work like hell to stay slim.  Not that he'd know that.  Not that he knew anything about her.

"What?" he asked, seeing her frown.

"Nothing, nothing."  Why bother to let him know about her dieting efforts.  Not like he'd care.  He took in her scowl and wondered what he'd said wrong this time.  Maybe it was time to just cut their losses for today.

"Here, why don't I get the bill?"

"You sure?  You got anything left after OTB?" she asked disdainfully.

"Oh, sure, I might even have more waiting for me back there, I bet just before we left.  I was thinking I might stop by, see how it went."

Of course, she thought.  Back to OTB.  Not like he could offer to go shopping with her, or see a movie, or anything.  He caught her look.

"You uh, you wanna come along?"

"Why would I wanna spend time at OTB?  I did that enough as a kid.  It's not my thing," she said brusquely.

Oh.  Of course.  And why should she want to spend time with him?  She'd done her daughterly duty.  He should probably just be grateful for lunch, awkward as it had been.  He got the bill, paid it in silence.

**ooo000ooo**

Later, as they left the restaurant, both feeling let down, she decided to not stew silently about the food thing.  Maybe she should tell him about that, at least, and maybe next time he wouldn't make such a crass comment about how much she ate.

"You know, I've been dieting," she said abruptly.

"Oh yeah?  Why?"

"I don't wanna get fat."

"Hey, you look fine, sweetheart," he said, trying to be encouraging.

"That's because I'm dieting."  How dense could he be?

"I never saw the point in dieting."

"Well there's also my health.  I am a nurse, you know."

"What, nurses aren't allowed to eat?"

"I'm in health care.  A good diet's part of good health."

"You sound like my partner.  I eat plenty, I'm fine."

"Yeah?  And how's your liver?" she jibed.

"What's left of it hasn't given up on me yet," he answered evenly.

"Mom's dieting too."

"Yeah?  Good for her.  How's she doing?"

"OK.  Don't you talk to her?  I mean, I thought you guys had to work out some stuff about her selling the old apartment…"

"Yeah, well, we did that through her lawyer.  Him and me are real good buddies now.  That reminds me, I oughtta send him a Bundt cake."

"Yeah, not like you'd wanna keep in touch with her or anything," she muttered.  Or me.  Or any part of your sorry past.

"Well, you know, there's nothing like divorce to really cement a friendship."

"You cops, you're all the same.  Peel away that thick skin and you find a heart of brick," she said wearily.

"Oh, now I get it.  You saw me on TV and remembered how much you hated me," he joked bitterly.  The more time they'd spent together today, the closer to the surface her dislike of him had grown.  He should've known the brief reprieve at the beginning of lunch wouldn't last.  And how could it?  There was too much hurt in their past to have any kind of a civil present… or future, for that matter.

"No, but I'm beginning to," she muttered.  What a waste of time.  Here she was, a grown woman, still trying to… what?  Have a Daddy?  Fill the need she'd had when she was a little girl, to have this sorry bastard actually give a damn about her, take care of her, put her first instead of a bottle, a horse race… or just about anything else?

"Somebody said 'I'd rather be a terrible warning to my children than a good example,'" he took refuge in humour as usual.

Great.  Very funny.  Good thing he could joke about how much he'd let her down, how much he continued to let her down, because it sure didn't get a chuckle outta her.  "You were funnier when you were drunk.  I gotta go to work," she said abruptly.

"I'll get you a cab," he offered.

"It's OK," she looked at him in distaste.  "You know, you were right.  You are better when you find the people already dead," she turned away and walked off.

Lennie gazed after her.  This was why he didn't try to contact his daughter all that frequently.  Make that ever.  Because when they did get together… it hurt like hell.

**ooo000ooo**

Back to OTB.  Tippy-Top hadn't won after all.  Another wad of money down the drain, thank you very much Fat Frankie over in Chelsea.

More races, more losses, more mulling over lunch with Cathy.  It was like they talked past each other, just couldn't connect.  She seemed to want to get along with him, but then they'd get together and she'd jab at him and he really couldn't do anything about it, couldn't seem to say or do anything to not disappoint her.

And now this.  'I just assumed it was me'.  He winced, thinking how much that must have hurt her.  How could he possibly make amends for that?  How could he possibly make up for having made a little girl feel responsible for her father's out-of-control life?

He couldn't.  And in the face of that, his hard-won sobriety was meaningless.  Sure, he'd been sober for years.  But what did it matter?  Who really cared that he was sober, other than him?  How did his being sober now make up for him being a drunk before?

He left the OTB parlour, tired, poorer, still obsessing.  Walked for a while, thinking, regretting.

'I just assumed it was me'.  He knew she resented him, he'd known for a long time, but it had honestly never occurred to him that she might have grown up blaming herself for his drinking.  No wonder she hated him.

Hell.  He'd worked so damn hard to stop.  It had been the toughest thing he'd ever done in his life, climbing the Twelve Steps to sobriety, going against so much: habit, lifestyle, inertia, addiction, his own personality, his history… but he'd done it.  It had taken everything in his power to beat his alcoholism and he'd finally done it.  Gone from 'alcoholic' to 'recovering alcoholic'.  And for what?

Times like this, he could really use a vodka.

Right, Lennie, that would be the perfect end to a perfect day.  Dive right back into the bottle.

And why the hell not?

Sobriety.  It didn't matter worth a damn.  He could never go back and undo the damage he'd done.  He had two daughters, neither one of whom he could relate to.  Two ex-wives who hated him, with good reason.  Colleagues in a bunch of different precincts who could all share Lennie the Drunk stories.  What did Rey say?  He'd checked him out when they were partnered.  "You were a good cop.  Then you fell into a bottle.  You climbed out, but the jury's still out."

The jury was still out.  Almost four years sober, but of course the goddamn jury was still out.  And it would stay out.  There would always be people who would not let him live down his past.  Colleagues, superiors… Rey's pretty little wife, who worried that her precious darling would get hurt being partnered to an unreliable alcoholic… and of course his daughter.  And as much as he joked about it, it hurt like hell.

Sobriety.  The toughest achievement of his life, and it really didn't matter worth a damn.  Apparently the real crowning achievement of his life was that today he'd helped kill a guy.  There, that was something to be proud of.  No daughter to say "To Dad, thanks for beating the bottle", but a bunch of cops giving him a standing ovation at the precinct, some old farts toasting him at O'Haran's, a waitress coming on to him, all because he'd helped kill Mickey Scott.

Maybe he should go get liquored, at least he'd be able to stop thinking about this for a little while.  Who the hell was he staying sober for anyway?  Who was he kidding?  He was too damn old to turn over a new leaf, and nobody would let him anyway.

He looked up at a neon sign.  A bar.  And if he remembered right, this one had pool tables, so if he decided to stay on the wagon, he could always try to shark back some of what he'd lost on horses today.

**ooo000ooo**

He approached the bar.

Naw, don't drink.  Don't do it, said the little angel on one shoulder.  Do it, do it, you know you'll feel better, and there's no real reason not to, said the little devil on his other shoulder.  Lennie approached a barstool, wondering at the image in his head.  Angel and devil?  What was he, three years old?

"Uh, seat's taken.  Buddy's on the phone," said a heavyset middle-aged man.

Lennie suddenly noticed another man approaching.  Raised his eyebrows.  Jack McCoy?  In a dive like this?

"This your buddy?" he pointed to McCoy.

"Like brothers," the man said a little blurrily.

"Detective Briscoe," McCoy said with good cheer.  Whoa, Lennie caught the slight slur and the whiff of Scotch.  Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy was not feeling much pain right now.  Lennie's practiced eye estimated about eight drinks, give or take, over a few hours.  For a man of McCoy's build and regular tolerance for Scotch, that would put him somewhere on the border between very tipsy and slightly drunk.

"Counselor," he greeted him, a little dourly, and started to take off his coat.  He'd been hoping to either drink or decide not to drink on his own.  So much for that.  He couldn't get drunk in front of somebody he worked with, somebody who knew he was an alcoholic.  He'd lose whatever credibility he had left, possibly even his job if word got out.

"Out of aall the gin joints in all the world, etc. etc. etc," McCoy pronounced, sitting down.  Lennie nodded.  Yeah.  Of all the gin joints I had to choose one with a co-worker in it.  Close enough to a co-worker, anyway.  "Is it my imagination or are you not exactly thrilled to see me?" McCoy observed.  Good eyes, even when tipsy, Lennie thought.

"Oh, it's just that I thought that the Constitution provided for the separation of work and play," he smiled, trying to cover his disappointment at seeing McCoy here.  It wasn't McCoy's fault.

"That's funny.  He's funny," McCoy commented to the heavyset man.  "No work here, Detective.  This is play, pure and simple, I bet you didn't think I had it in me," he said with slightly intoxicated pride.

Lennie chuckled.  "To tell you the truth I never thought about it," he replied, sitting and realizing that no, if he had thought about it, he wouldn't have figured McCoy for a guy who would ever want to hang out in a working class bar getting plastered.

"Barkeep, a drink for my friend here," McCoy signaled expansively.

"Yeah, club soda with lime," Lennie said automatically.

"Make it a double, on me," McCoy slurred slightly.

"Sure you uh, haven't had enough already?" Lennie asked, a little amused.  Jack McCoy getting hosed.  Pretty funny sight.  If Adam Schiff could see him now…

"This is what it's all about," objected McCoy.  "Coupla drinks, with a coupla guys…" he checked his watch,  "coupla hours…"

**ooo000ooo**

Coupla hours indeed.  "What does that say?" McCoy blearily showed Lennie his watch about an hour or so later.

"Says she isn't coming, whoever she is," Lennie told him with humour.  He'd watched in envious amusement as McCoy crossed the border between tipsy and drunk and over into completely soused, waiting for somebody to come pick him up.  No big mystery who that somebody was.

"What makes you think-"

"Twenty-five years on the force."  As if it took a detective to know that the only person who could make a man wait and wait, getting more and more wasted, checking his watch until he couldn't read the numbers any more, was a woman.  And Lennie had figured out a long time ago who that woman was.  Especially with McCoy's reputation for dating assistants – Claire's too, she'd dated another boss of hers a few years ago.  Didn't take a detective to put two and two together like that.

McCoy started to get up unsteadily.  "At least she's Irish," Lennie commented.  Come on, McCoy, get off it, everybody knows you sleep with Claire Kincaid.  The 'we're just co-workers' act is pretty thin.  McCoy looked at Lennie in brief surprise, then seemed to decide to take it in stride and finished getting off the barstool.

"Hey, hey, you know what?  Maybe I better take you home," Lennie stood up as McCoy stumbled a bit.  So much for falling off the wagon today; instead maybe he'd help out another drunk.  Lucky bastard, being able to use booze to numb himself without it being a disaster.  Although, from what he'd seen and heard, Jack McCoy downed enough Scotch, with enough frequency, to make Lennie a little suspicious that maybe he had a problem too.  But hey, at least he didn't have a reputation as an alcoholic.  Skirt chaser, maybe, but not alcoholic.  Some people had all the luck.

"I don't believe there's any law against taking a cab while intoxicated," McCoy said unsteadily.  He put on his jacket.  "Been a good day, hasn't it, Detective?"

"For who?" Lennie asked.  Not for Mickey Scott.  Not for him.  Sure as hell not for McCoy, stuck here, stood up by his little chickadee.  Although from what he was seeing, McCoy wasn't feeling too upset about it right now.  Too pickled to feel much, probably.

"Good guys pulled through, bottom o' the ninth," McCoy replied, putting his coat on over the jacket.  He high-fived Mike's hand in farewell as he started to weave off, then turned around.  "And to hell with 'er," he smiled.

"To hell with all of 'em," Lennie muttered.  To hell with pretty little Claire Kincaid standing up McCoy, to hell with McCoy celebrating death, to hell with Rey not batting an eye over it, to hell with Van Buren not even bothering to go, to hell with Scott, and most especially to hell with Cathy and to hell with him.  He was sick and tired of trying.  To hell with all of them.  Let the little devil win, and bye bye little angel.  "Hey pal," he waited till he caught the bartender's eye.  "You know what club soda's good for?" he pushed his glass away, "Cleaning the grill.  Gimme a vodka, straight up."  What a relief.

**ooo000ooo**

The ten o'clock news had come on and Lennie had finally seen the clip of himself as he came back from the washroom.  There he was, next to Rey and Claire at the entrance to Attica, on the way out after the execution.  Quick shot, the lights just caught their faces as they walked to the parking lot. McCoy had been behind Claire and his face hadn't shown up in the blink-and-you-miss-it spot.  Too bad.  McCoy had been pretty proud of himself.  He sat down next to Mike, McCoy's heavyset friend.

Nice guy, Mike.  They'd become pretty good buddies.

"Hey, I just saw me, on the TV," he chuckled.  Funny to see yourself on the little box.

"Wha?" Mike asked.  Mike had been matching him drink for drink – pretty impressive since it looked like he'd been matching McCoy drink for drink before Lennie came along.

"Me and my par'ner.  On the tube."

"How come?"

"We got 'im, we're the cops got Mickey Scott."

"Huh?"

"That bastard that got executed t'day," ex-e-cu-tid, a long word, "me an' my rookie par'ner, we got 'im.  Pretty easy collar, lotsa witnesses, real sonofabitch to bring in though.  Then McCoy prosecuted him," pro-se-cu-tid, another long word.

"No way.  You were the guys?" Mike asked in disbelief.

"Yup.  We caught 'im, McCoy cooked 'im."  Cooked 'im real good.  Real prouda himself, too.

"Lemme buy you another," Mike said in drunken camaraderie.

Ah, why not.  The guy was dead, somebody might as well get something out of it, right?  "Hey, you can buy 'em all night, little buddy," he said cheerfully, clapping Mike's shoulder.  "Kill me twice, Jimmy," he told the bartender.  This was much better than trying to stay off the sauce, trying to be a dad, trying to be what he wasn't.  Might as well take pride in something, and everybody else seemed to think he should be proud of having caught Scott.  The hell with Cath, 'I just assumed it was me'.  Well, this time it is you, sweetheart.  A woman drove me to drink, and I never had the decency to thank her, said good ol' W.C. Fields himself.  "You got kids?" he asked Mike.

"Try three."

"Mm.  I got two girls," he smiled, two beautiful girls.

"You must be proud."

"Proud, yeah," sure, what's not to be proud of?  He downed another vodka.  They'd both gone to college despite him.  Cathy was a nurse, good job, seemed to be doing OK except on those days when she decided to include her sad excuse for a father in her life.  She was doing good.  Coulda been anything, coulda been a teacher, coulda been a lawyer, coulda been the weather lady, "You know who kills me, the weather lady.  The weather lady says, it's 65 at the airport," Mike leaned closer and Lennie peered at him earnestly.  "Who gives a damn?  Nobody lives at the airport," Mike cracked up and Lennie followed suit.  "She hates my guts," he mentioned.

"The weather lady?" Mike asked, confused.

"No, my kid," Lennie corrected him.  The weather lady, right.  'Course, the weather lady would also hate his guts if she was his daughter.  "Her mother cheats around on _me_, and she hates _my_ guts."  That still stung a bit, after all these years.  Being cheated on.  Little more vodka would take that away too though.

"Hey.  You shoot stick?" Mike suggested.  Nice guy, trying to cheer him up.

Pool, yeah.  Something else he was good at besides guzzling booze and pissing off his daughter.  He smiled in anticipation and said casually, "Once or twice."

**ooo000ooo**

Much, much, later, he had indeed won back some of what he'd lost with the horses.  Mike had told him something about McCoy playing darts, and he'd set out to outdo McCoy's darts prowess with his own pool prowess.  Prowess.  What kinda word was that?  A Jack McCoy word.  He sank a ball.

"What is it with you guys?  First darts, now pool?" Mike was dismayed.

"Never mess with a civil servant, my friend," Lennie told him, setting up another shot.  So Jack was a darts shark.  Wouldn'a taken him for one.  EADA Jack McCoy, hanging out in bars and playing darts with the salt 'o the earth.  Funny.  He took the shot.

"Too much time on your hands," Mike jibed as they watched the balls go.  There, another one down.

"Yeah, too much time, not enough time," wasn't there a song with time in it?  He used to know it, how'd it go, "''Tis I'll be there-'" he took a shot, then recognized a slight figure in a black leather jacket coming through the haze.  Who?  Hey! "Whoa, looka' this!"  Little Claire Kincaid.  Dressed like a little rebel.  Finally here to pick up her little rebel biker boyfriend.  Who'da guessed they were button-down shysters?

"You've been drinking," she told him.  Sharp eyes on that girl.  That's why she got the big bucks, cause she noticed stuff like that.

He slapped the pool table in mock dismay.  "That's what's causing this!" he threw the stick down onto the table.  'Course he was winning every game, but Mike was getting some shots in, which he wouldn'a if Lennie hadn'a been so drunk.  Then again, if he wasn't drunk, he'd be sober, right?  And that was no fun.

"This your kid?" Mike asked.

That was funny too.  Nice when everything was funny.  Claire, being his kid.  "Aah, let's see.  Do you hate my guts?" he asked her.  She looked at him, puzzled.  She didn't get it.  'Course not.  Kids these days.  No sense o' humour.  Claire, Rey, Cathy, so damn serious all the time.  "I guess not."

"Jack called me."

Good old Jack, right, that's why she was here.  Sorry, too late, sweetheart.  "Jack.  Jack turned into a pumpkin.  C'n I buy you a drink, Counselor?"

"No thanks," she probably didn't drink.  Didn't know what she was missing.  What would Claire be like drunk?  Probably silly.  Girls got silly.  Guys got funny.  Told jokes.  He knew some jokes.

"Oh – OK, I got one for you," how'd it go, "How come California has the most lawyers, an' New Jersey has the most toxic dumps?" Get a little chuckle.  Come on, somebody's gotta stop being so damn serious around here.

"Because New Jersey got first pick," she answered him, and you call that a smile?  Kids.  Life's too short to be so serious.

"You don' get it," he smiled at her ruefully, and why should she.  Nobody born after 1950 could tell or appreciate a joke worth a damn.  Mike and Jack, they were funny guys.  Cathy, Rey, Claire, though, all the kids in his life were the same.  No sense o' humour.  What's the point?  How can you get through your sorry life without a laugh or two?  'Course, none o' them had any reason to need to hide behind jokes.  They weren't all failures, like him.

"Look, why don't you get your coat, and I'll drive you home," Claire said to him gently.  Oh, OK.  Why not?  He'd pass out, maybe go to OTB tomorrow.

Wait - didn't he go to OTB today?

**ooo000ooo**

"Home, James," he told Claire, leaning back in the car.

"Where to?"

"I use' ta know," he told her, chuckling.  Where the hell was he?  No idea, but he knew his address.  Coral Avenue, like he lived on a reef or something.  Or a reefer.  No, no reefers, just good old vodka, whisky, gin…

"So this morning really bummed you out?" said little Claire.

"Do I look bummed out to you?" nah, he wasn't bummed out.  Drunken bum, maybe, but not bummed out.  "You know, it wouldn't be so terrible," he mused.

"What's that?"

"If you were my kid," he told her.  Stick with the program, kiddo.

"I guess I should take that as a compliment," she smiled.  Nice girl.

"Hey, yer smart, yer pretty, you got a good job, _and_," this was the important part, "you don't hate my guts."  That would be nice.  A kid who didn't think he was a pathetic old drunk.  Even when he was.

"Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you," Claire told him.  Such a nice girl.  Driving him home.  His daughter would probably just let him pickle himself some more.  But Claire really didn't know much about life.  None of these kids did.  Surrounded by fresh-faced idealistic kids, and except for Claire, all of them thought he was a failure.  Ah well, let him be a failure then.  A lot easier and a lot more fun than trying not to be.

"Oh-ho, no, you don't know 'er, you don't know 'er," he told Claire.  What was it Cath had said?  'You're right.  You are better when they're already dead.'  Who says that to somebody they don't hate?  "I don' even know 'er."  Never really took the time to.  Probably why she hated him.  One of so many reasons.  He didn't know her, never had, never would.  Too late now.  "I never will, I never will," he finished miserably, voice dropping to a whisper.  Never will.

Suddenly a loud sound was assaulting his ears and a bright light was blinding him and he wanted to tell Claire to lay off the horn, didn't she realize he was drunk and that was too loud a sound around a drunk guy and then the car was suddenly shaking violently with a godawful shriek of metal what the hell was that and then whirling around and Claire wasn't a very good driver was she, you don't spin a car like that whoa, Claire, you're gonna get us killed -


	3. Accident

**CHAPTER 3: ACCIDENT**

Mother of God, what was that.

Lennie opened his eyes, dazed.  What a loud sound.  His ears hurt like hell.  Sound so loud like a crash.

That was a crash.

A crash?  Was he just in an accident?

Was that why the car wasn't moving?

He fumbled at his seat belt.  Where the hell was he?  Whose car was this?

Claire.  Claire Kincaid.

"Claire?"

She was leaning over to the side, away from him.  Couldn't see her face.  Get outta the car.  Maybe she's looking out the other side.  Go help Claire.

So hard unbuckling.  Why these damn things couldn't be just a little – oh, there it was.  Trying to get the door open.  OK, slow down, concentrate, there, he opened the door.  Go to Claire's side.

Stumbled around the car.  Claire?

Claire.  Face to the side, blood running down, slumped to the side.  Car crumpled on her side.

Oh my god.

He was a homicide detective, had seen plenty of bodies in various states of distress, and even through a haze of alcohol he could recognize one that was dead or dying.  And this was a body that had suffered far too much damage to be viable.

Oh my god.

He started to cry.  Oh my god.  Claire.

No.

She couldn't be dead.

People her age don't just die.

Sure they do.  They die at any age.  They die senselessly, violently, suddenly.  All the time.

He stood, sobbing, then slowly realized that even though it looked for all the world like there was no way this girl was anything other than dead, dead, dead, he could be wrong.  Please god, he could be wrong.  OK.  So what should he do to help make himself be wrong?  Call somebody.

Call who?  Wait, what was that sound?  Sirens.  That's what he should do, call an ambulance.  That would be a good idea.  Call 911, if he could find a phone somewhere.  Sirens coming closer.  Maybe they could tell him where to find a phone.  No wait - if they came here he wouldn't need a phone.  Hey, they were getting really close, and there it was, there was an ambulance.  Did he call them?  Nope, musta been somebody else.  Some good Samaritan musta called the moment the car hit – unless he had blacked out, been in the car longer than he thought.

Ambulance.

Police car.  Just like that, ambulance and police.  Police, Fire and Ambulance, that's 911.  Hey, he was police too, but he didn't count.

People swarming about, getting Claire out, talking real fast at each other.  Pushing him aside until one of them noticed the open passenger side door and looked at him.

"You know this lady?" a young guy asked.

"Yeah – Claire, Claire Kincaid," he managed.

"You were in the car?"

"Yeah-" before he knew it, and much faster than he could follow, he was being grabbed and quickly assessed, light in his eyes, quick hands checking him out, babbling incomprehensible gibberish at each other, just as quickly leaving him alone, except for one guy who told him brusquely, "Get in," and indicated the ambulance.  He said something about Just fine, hospital anyway, which Lennie couldn't follow at all.  And then they were off to the races, two guys grimly shooting instructions at each other as the ambulance shrieked through the streets, still working on Claire, and Lennie couldn't even see her.  He stayed in a corner, as still as possible.  That's what you do in an emergency, let the pros do their job and just stay outta their way.

Hospital.  Doors blowing open on the ambulance, another ambulance pulling in right behind them, quick-talking paramedics rushing out with Claire, the other ambulance spitting out the other driver and his own paramedics, now joined by medical people from the hospital swarming out and taking over, and though Lennie couldn't follow a damn thing they said he had a brief image of a relay race, batons passed, first runners slowing and moving off the track, their part done, second runners sprinting off, quick quick quick.  And the batons were Claire and the other driver.  Didn't seem like he was hurt so bad.  Still conscious, yelling, drunk as a skunk as they rushed him away.

Where'd they take her?

And then some black guy was checking him out, white coat, stethoscope swinging, asking him questions, a repeat of what they did at the scene, a little slower though.  Couldn't really follow too well.  Pain, numbness, tingling, pain in back, neck?  Muttering something to a nurse about why wasn't he in a C-collar.

"Did you lose consciousness, sir?" the doctor was asking.

"Uh… I dunno.  Don' think so," he managed, and then the guy was rattling off more questions, impatient with him.  Slow the hell down, doc, slow the hell down.  Finally stopped asking questions for a while, cool fingers checking his neck, stick out your tongue, say aah, move your arm, squeeze my finger, tap knee, arm, leg, suddenly he was getting blood taken, Ow, one, two, three, four, five little vials, here, hold this in place, little cotton ball, band-aid, lie back, hospital bracelet attached to his wrist, Get a CT-head and neck said the doctor, stethoscope swinging, making Lennie dizzy.

"M'Okay," Lennie interrupted him.  "I'm fine."

"You're slurring your words, sir.  And you're having difficulty following what I'm saying."

"Tha's 'cause 'mdrunk," he explained patiently.  Just drunk, that's all.  Not hurt, not dying, not like Claire.

"I realize that, sir, and I'm sure you're fine otherwise, but we still have to take precautions.  Accident victims get a CT-head and -neck.  It may be a while, though.  Why don't you wait right here, I'll send a nurse when they're ready for you."

Lennie lay there, watched him leave, then realized he couldn't just wait.

"'Scuse me?" he approached a nurse.  "Th' lady I was brought in with?  Claire Kincaid?  How's she?"

"Sir, please lie down.  We'll let you know when we know."

"But-"

"You'll just have to wait and see, sir.  Now please, lie down.  Oh-" she looked at a tall woman approaching them, a uniform.  "I think the police will need to take your statement."

Woman looking him over, greying hair pulled back severely, didn't see a lotta older women in uniform.  She musta been the only one in her precinct when she started out.  She was asking him questions too, name, address, did you see the other vehicle, quickly at first, slowing down when she realized he really couldn't follow at her original speed.  And then she was done and gone too.

Back to the nurses.  How's Claire?  Where's Claire?  Damn it.  They wouldn't tell him anything.  Tried three times.  Damn it.

He should do something.  What?  Oh.  Needed to call McCoy.  Jack, Jack had to know.  That was his girl in there.  He'd wanna know.  But how could he call when he didn't know Jack's number?

He had Jack's number somewhere.  But where?

He was gonna need help.  He was gonna need somebody here to help him out.

But who?

Normally people in an accident call family, right?  Problem was, he didn't have any family – none he could call, anyway.  Cathy?  Not after this afternoon, 'I just thought it was me'.  Ex-wives?  Right.  His other daughter?  Didn't know her new number.

OK, who's next?

Maybe Rey.  Rey should know McCoy's number and Rey might be able to help out.  Rey was probably the closest he had to a person he could rely on.  Buddies at the 116, poker buddies, racing buddies, pool buddies, all those people might be closer than Rey but Rey would probably be more helpful.  And he was reliable, level-headed.  Good kid.

OK.  Rey.  Good thing he knew Rey's number by heart.

"Curtis residence," Rey's pretty little wife, whatsername, Debbie – no, not Debbie, Deborah.  Rey would probably take his head off if he called her Debbie.

"Deborah, hey, it's Lennie," oh shit he was still drunk, well hopefully she wouldn't notice, "c'n I talk to Rey?"

"He's not here, Lennie – are you OK?"

"Yeah, yeah, I been in an accident, but I'm fine," enunciate, enunciate, "I'm at th' hospital, St. Vincen's, and I need him to do something for me," OK, that sounded like it came out pretty clear.

"OK, he should be home soon," Deborah said.  "Do you want me to send him to the hospital as soon as he comes in?"  Level-headed girl, nice and calm.

"Yeah, tha' might be a good idea…"

"OK, I'll do that-"

"C'n you call 'im?"

"Yes, yes, I'll call him right now, he should be home any – oh!" Deborah broke off, talking to somebody.

"Lennie?"  Oh good.  Rey.

"Hey, Rey… lissen, I needja ta get over here, and I needja ta call McCoy."

"Lennie, what happened?" Rey's voice sounded real concerned.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I walked away withou' a scratch," Lennie said.  OK, concentrate, be reassuring, be coherent, try not to slur your words too much.  "But Claire, she was drivin' me home an' she's not doin' so good, she might not make it.  An' I dunno McCoy's number."

"OK, I'll be right there," Rey assured him.  "And I'll call McCoy.  Hang tight," he hung up.

OK.  Rey was on his way.

Oh, this was not gonna be pretty.  Rey was gonna get here soon and he was still almost fall-down drunk, and Rey would be sure to notice.  Hell, the nurses noticed, the ambulance fellas noticed, the uni lady noticed, no way Rey wouldn't notice that Lennie was plastered.  Maybe calling Rey wasn't such a great idea.

Well, too late now.  Too late now, he'd already gone and done it, he'd fallen off the wagon, all the way down the Twelve Steps, stopped his sober count – what was it?  About 1350 days, last time he figured it out.  So much for that.

So now Rey was gonna know, and McCoy was gonna know, and soon after that Van Buren was gonna know, and that was it for his career.  And even if by some miracle he was allowed to stay on the force, he almost definitely would be outta Homicide and definitely, definitely out a partner.  No way Rey would wanna work with him now and even if he did, no way Debbie would let him.  Deborah.  Debbie's a cheerleader's name.  Deborah.

Too bad, him and Rey were just getting comfortable with each other.  Not a bad kid, just a little green, a little serious, and a little self-righteous.

Ooh, that wasn't gonna be pretty either.  Rey would probably give him a piece of his mind when he saw the state he was in.  He just hoped Rey wouldn't yell – that would probably really give him a headache.

What would Rey say?  Might as well think about that, amuse himself trying to guess what Rey would say, he had nothing else to do anyway except worry about Claire.

Claire, god, god, god, Claire.  She didn't look so good at all.  She was gonna die, and it was all his fault.  If he hadn'a been so drunk she wouldn'a driven him, she'd be fine.

Poor kid, poor Claire, people her age shouldn't die.  They did all the time, but they shouldn't.  Too young and pretty and good to die while drunken old assholes like him stayed alive.  Same car hit 'em both – how come she was dead or dying and he was OK?  Not a scratch.  Just fine.

"Sir?  They're ready for you to get your CT done," a nurse indicated a wheelchair for him.  He didn't need a wheelchair.

"I don' need a wheelchair."

"I'm sure you don't, sir, but it's hospital policy."

Damn.  Fine.  Wheelchair.

**ooo000ooo**

He'd come back from the CT, been poked and prodded some more, pretty unpleasant stuff, then told he was supposed to stay in the hospital until he sobered up.  So here he was, waiting to sober up.

"Lennie!" somebody called his name.  Lennie raised his head.  Rey, hurrying towards him.  "What happened?"

"Hey, Rey, they won't tell me anything.  They just said wait'n see, so I been waitin' 'n seein'," he tried to speak as clearly as possible, knowing there probably wasn't any point.  No, of course not, Rey was looking at him real worried-like.

"Lennie…"

What the hell. Not like he could keep this a secret.  "Yeah, yeah.  I was drinkin'." He sat down and put his head in his hands.  "I was drinkin', and Claire was driving me home, and so now here she is an' they won't tell me how she's doing."  OK, kid, lay into me, I know, I know, I fucked up big time.  Just get it over with and then find out about Claire for me, please.

There was a brief silence.

"OK, don't worry, I'll try and find out what's going on.  They probably wouldn't talk to you 'cause you're drunk," Rey said.  Drunk.  Not just drinking, but so drunk ER nurses didn't wanna have anything to do with him.  Rey said something else that Lennie didn't catch.  At least he was keeping his voice down.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm drunk.  I fell off the wagon, OK?  I know," he leaned back and closed his eyes.

"Hey, it's OK, it's OK, Lennie, don't worry about it.  Stay here, I'll be back," Rey touched Lennie's shoulder and went to the front desk.  Now that was nice of him.  He was waiting until they knew about Claire before ripping into him.  OK, Junior.  Thanks.  Lennie kept his eyes closed.  Room spinning.   How much did he drink, anyway?  He used to have pretty good tolerance, but almost four years of sobriety could bring that down a notch or two.

Almost four years.  So much for that.  Start the count over.  Oh, what for?  What count?  Why bother?  If four years could go down the drain just like that, what was the point of trying again?  Not like he'd have any reason to try again after tonight.  The least awful thing that was going to happen was he was gonna lose his job.  The worst was he'd killed Claire.  Pretty little Claire Kincaid, it wouldn't be so bad if you were my kid, and he'd gone and killed her.

Somebody sat next to him.  Rey.  "OK, Claire's in the OR and I got a hold of McCoy.  He'll probably be here in a little while."  There was a slight pause.  "Are you OK?"

Are you OK.  What kinda question was that.  Sure, he was fine.  "Yeah, I'm fine.  No, hell, I'm not fine.  If I hadn't been drinking she wouldn't a given me a ride.  She'd be OK."

"You don't know that.  She coulda gotten in an accident on another street.  This wasn't your fault."

"I was drinking," he reminded Rey.

"This wasn't your fault, Lennie."

What?  Hang on.  Lennie opened his eyes to check it was still his partner next to him.  This wasn't your fault?  Where the hell did that come from?  That wasn't anything Rey Curtis would say.  Was Rey channeling somebody else?  "Hey Mr. I Never Did Drugs and I Never Did Nothin' Wrong, what's with you?"

"What?"

"How come you're not reading me the riot act?  What's with this 'It's not your fault'?  You know I'm not s'posed to drink, ever."

"Doesn't matter, the accident still wasn't your fault," Rey said more gently than Lennie had ever heard him speak to anybody other than little kids.

"I don't even know why I was drinkin'.  Yeah, I do, I'm a drunk," Lennie the Drunk, that was him.  "Agh, I'm a sorry excuse for a human being… can't even stay off the bottle." Too damn bright in here.  He closed his eyes.

"Yeah, you can.  You did it for years before today.  You made a mistake.  It happens."

OK, whatever, Rey was probably drunk too.  Funny, he didn't look it.  Soon enough he'd sober up and realize that this was a big deal.  That his drunken sot of a partner, Lennie 'You climbed out but the jury's still out' Briscoe, had fallen back in.  The jury might as well come back in.

Partner.  Yeah, not for long.  Wonder how long he'd wait before putting in a request for reassignment.  "You gonna ask for a new partner now?" Lennie made himself look at Rey.  Better than thinking about Claire.

"What?"

"You gonna ask for a new partner?"

"Why?"  Come on, Rey, stay with the program here, kid.  Rey's puzzled face suddenly cleared and he answered brusquely. "No, of course not.  Lennie, you made a mistake.  I'm not gonna ask for a new partner 'cause of one mistake.  Don't be stupid."

Huh?  I must be drunker than I thought, Lennie thought to himself.  Rey's cell phone rang.  Lennie closed his eyes again while Rey talked to somebody.

Hm.  Sounded heavy.  Oh, Deborah.  He was talking to Deborah.  Must be nice to have a little wifey to go home to, somebody to call you when you were in the hospital, somebody to give a damn what happened to you.  He'd like that, having family call him at the hospital.  Too bad he drank all that away.  Long, long time ago.

Right now Rey didn't sound like he appreciated his little lady.  Sounded like he was fighting with her.  Did Det. and Mrs. Perfect Marriage ever fight?  Did they ever get that human?

"Not now!  I'll call you later!" he hung up on her.

"That Deborah?" Lennie asked.  Never heard him hang up on Deborah before.

"Yeah."

"Sounded pissed off," he remarked.

"Just worried," Rey said dismissively.  "So what happened?"

"You mean the accident?"

"Yeah."

"She was drivin' me, and we went into an intersection an' then boom, crash, big noise, and I get out and there she is, blood all down her face.  Ambulance got there pretty fast – somebody musta seen and called it in," Lennie frowned miserably.  "I don't think she's gonna make it."  Not with all that blood running down her face.  Not with the car crushed the way it was.  Not with the ambulance people running and talking that fast.

"We don't know that yet.  They get the other driver?"

"Yeah, he was fine too.  Drunker'n me, if you can believe that."  At least that was something to be proud of.  He was less drunk than somebody who was driving.  Hey, you take what you can get.  "Took my statement, brought us here, checked me out, I'm jus' fine."

"OK." Rey said.  There was a brief silence.  "So what happened?" he asked gently.

"You mean why was I drinkin'?" Lennie closed his eyes.  Shit.  Why was he drinking.  Little angel, little devil, and stupid him, caught in the middle.  'I just assumed it was me.'  "'Cause I'm an alcoholic, and this 'recovering alcoholic' crap is just that, a loada crap." Excuses, excuses, the only real reason was that he was a drunk.

"Lennie, come on.  What happened today, how come you fell off today?"

What happened today.

Oh come on, kid, what kinda question was that?  Even if Rey didn't know about Cathy, what kinda question was that, what happened today?  Could he really be that unaffected by the fact that he'd helped kill a man?  "One less repeat offender," he'd said.  Kids these days.  Cold as ice.  Rey had probably done some work and then gone home and had a great day with his perfect family.  Who cared about Mickey Scott?

"You gotta ask me that?  You were there – oh I forgot, you don't have a problem with it.  You think it's just fine, 'cause it's what that bastard deserved, you wish you coulda turned the knobs yourself-" he was becoming indignant.  Rey, Cathy, both of 'em cold as ice, Claire the only kid who wasn't, and of course she was gonna be dead soon.  'Cause only the good die young.

"Hey, hey, calm down," Rey interrupted him soothingly, back to his 'talking to little kids' voice.  Great.  His baby partner, probably not even a gleam in his old man's eye the first time Lennie got drunk, was talking down to him.  Well, that's what happens when you're drunk, people talk down to you.  At least he wasn't yelling.  "OK, OK, so you were upset about the execution."

"Yeah, sorry, my kid might think I gotta heart of brick but I don't, it bugged me, OK?" he said defensively.  "An' I went back to dealin' with my problems the way I used ta.  What the hell, it's not like I'm gonna hurt my kids any more by bein' a drunk, right?"  He chuckled at himself.  "Not like that stopped me before anyway," he reflected.  And now there was no way to make up for it.  No way to make it up to Cathy, no way to make it up to Claire.

"Your daughter?"

"Yeah, had lunch with her.  Real nice time.  She hates me," he added.  Nice girl, terrific, smart, pretty, good job, only problem was she hated him.

"She doesn't hate you, Lennie," Rey corrected him automatically.

Right.  She doesn't hate you.  Rey, Claire, both of them telling him Cathy didn't hate him.  What did they know.  "Yeah, Mr. Perfect Husband and Daddy, you don't know anything about it.  She does.  I was a sorry excuse for a daddy then, and I still am now, an' she hates me, and she's got a right to."

What the hell did Rey know about letting down his kids and fucking up his life.  What did Claire know about it either.  'Course, when Claire told him his daughter didn't hate him, that was the last thing she said.  That was probably the very last thing Claire Kincaid would ever say to anybody.  How nice, that girl's last words were a lie.  Oops, better hope lightning didn't strike Rey down as he said them, or they'd be his last words too, and then wouldn't Debbie – Deborah – be pissed at him.

"OK, Lennie, relax," Rey said, "Just tell me what happened."

Yeah, OK, what happened.  What happened?  "So I got together with some friendsa mine, nice time, 'cept they were jokin' about Scott," Lennie's just upset 'cause he didn't get to shoot the SOB himself.  Right.  "And then I went to the OTB place an' my daughter's there.  You know, Cathy.  An' we had lunch.  An' we had a nice conversation," she beat the doctor's butts at poker, straight draw, atta girl.    Warm glow.  "An' it was nice."  And it was.  And then… "An' then it all went to crap.  An' I don't even know how," Lennie paused.  OK, that was enough.  "An' you know what?  I don't wanna talk about it."

"OK," Rey said gently.  "OK.  Let's just wait till McCoy gets here."

"He's pretty ripped too," Lennie figured Rey might as well know.  EADA Jack McCoy, toasted.  Except it was OK for him.

"McCoy?"

"Least, he was a couple hours ago.  When he left the bar."  When he said To hell with her.  Ouch.  To hell with her.  What a thing to say about Claire.

"You saw him?"

"Yeah.  Went into a bar, and there 'e is, tanked outta his gourd.  He was waitin' for Claire, but she stood 'im up.  He waited for her all day.  So he got a cab.  Then Claire comes along.  Told her Jack turned inta a pumpkin.  Mike thought she was my kid," Lennie laughed softly.

Yeah, that woulda been nice.  Claire, his kid.  Oh, not so nice now.  Imagine if that was his kid in there, dying.  God, what would he do if that really was his kid, dying or dead.  Either one of his daughters, whether he got along with them or not, at least they weren't dead.  That would be the worst thing in the entire world, having your kid die.  That would be Hell.  He'd dive into a bottle so deep he'd never come up for air again, wouldn't want to.

God, Claire's parents were gonna be here.  What could he say to them?  How could you possibly make up for killing somebody's kid?

Man, he thought he had bad shit on his conscience before.  He'd ruined Cathy's life, but he'd ended Claire's.  As sure as he'd killed Mickey Scott, he'd killed Claire Kincaid.  How could you possibly ever make up for something like that?

**ooo000ooo**

A little while later, McCoy was there, and then Claire's parents.  Mother, stepfather, lover.  The three people with the most reason to hate Lennie, rip into him for having done this to Claire.  For some reason none of them lay into him, they just left him alone.  That was nice of 'em.  Probably waiting to see what happened to Claire.  What they should blame him for.  Would it be (a) a booboo? (b) serious injury and permanent damage? (c) coma? or (d) death?  Lennie was betting on option 'd', the big D, Death.  Well, not betting on, but definitely assuming.

Homicide detective, doncha know.  He knew aall about dead bodies.  His specialty.  He was better when they were already dead.

Better find something else to do now.  Couldn't be a homicide detective if you were kicked off the force.  Maybe a PI?  Security guard, Twinkie cop?

What for?

What was the point?

He could really use a drink right about now.

**ooo000ooo**

Hated hospitals.  Spent way too much time in them.  Victims, families, death, grief, lights way too bright for an old drunk to bear.

**ooo000ooo**

Claire's mom, Linda.  Nice lady.  Stepfather, Mac.  Nice guy.  McCoy helping them try to get information from the hospital staff.  Not much there.  Still in the OR.  Still no word.

Linda.  Little tiny woman, big black eyes.  Looked a lot like Claire.  Looked about McCoy's age.  Looked like that was who McCoy shoulda been sleeping with, not a kid like Claire.  What could McCoy and Claire possibly have in common?

Not that Lennie didn't notice pretty young women, but he didn't try for them.  McCoy, he noticed, he tried, he succeeded, lucky bastard.

Not so lucky right now.  Lennie couldn't even look at him.  How could you say sorry for taking away somebody's girl like that?  Not like he stole her from him, nothing that minor.  Nope, he went and killed her.

**ooo000ooo**

Out of the blue, McCoy asked Rey "Did you get a statement from the garbage collector in the Frunt case?"

"No, not yet.  It was our day off yesterday," Rey replied.  "We were gonna go talk to him tomorrow."

"Don't worry about it, it's not that important," McCoy said dismissively, and left to get himself another coffee.

"Hell of a day off," Lennie muttered.

"You said you had lunch with your daughter?" Rey asked.

"Yeah," Lennie said, musing.  Lunch with Cathy.  What a treat.  "Told me I was funnier when I was drunk.  And I'm better with people when they're already dead."

Rey winced.  Yeah.  Sounded even worse when he repeated it to somebody else.  Sounded so bad, actually, that he could really use a drink or two to numb it away.

No wonder his daughter hated him.  After all that had happened, after he'd hurt Cathy and killed Claire by being a drunk… all he really wanted was another drink.

**ooo000ooo**

Too long in this damn place.  Head starting to clear a bit, but still going over the same worn thoughts, like he was running around a track or something.  Right.  The closest he'd come to running around a track was in his head.  He wouldn't be caught dead doing it for real, as exercise.  Good thing he'd been partnered with young go-getters who could do the physical part of their job, chasing down suspects, while he huffed and puffed behind them.  Mike, Rey, both of them in pretty good shape.

Ah well, so much for that.  Not like it would matter if he was in shape any more.  Not like he'd be running down perps any more.  What a way to end your career.  That thought was so depressing he wished he could wash it away with a vodka or two.  No he didn't, he corrected himself automatically.  Yes, he did.

**ooo000ooo**

"I wish she'd come to dinner more often," Linda said softly, then sighed as Mac put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in close.  Jack gazed at them for a moment, wondering if there was anything he could say or do to comfort her, then cleared his throat and picked up another magazine.  Nobody was reassuring themselves that Claire was gonna be OK, Lennie realized.  Nobody was saying "Don't worry, she'll come to dinner again soon," or anything like that.  They all knew better.  Linda and Mac were probably hoping against hope, and probably McCoy was too, but really, they all knew.

Suddenly he needed to get up and do something.

"Anybody want another coffee?" he asked.  That came out pretty clear.  Maybe he wasn't so drunk any more.  Mac nodded, Linda and Jack shook their heads.  "Rey?"

"I'll come with you," Rey stood too.  They approached the coffee machine.

"Wish my daughters would come to dinner too, except it's not so great when they do," Lennie muttered, putting coins in the coffee machine.

"Couldn't have been all bad though.  You said it started out good," Rey pointed out.  Rey, Rey, Rey.  You really don't know dicky bird about dysfunctional families, do you?

"Yeah.  It started nice.  Talked about poker," coffee black, no sugar for him, and Mac took sugar but no cream.  "Then she said she didn't ever wanna get married – 'cause it sure worked for me – then she said she always thought she was the reason I started drinking, then she said now she remembered why she hated me.  That part wasn't so nice."  OK, Junior?  Don't try to comfort me, 'it couldn't have been all bad'.  Rey looked down, accepting the implied rebuke.

"Lennie… I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," Lennie took the two cups and returned to the waiting area.

Rey trailed behind Lennie thoughtfully.  What must it be like to hear that kind of thing from your own daughter?  Hell, that's what it must be like.  No wonder Lennie had gotten drunk.  He'd get drunk too.

**ooo000ooo**

The doctor came and checked him out, pronounced him fit to go.  Not drunk any more.  Still felt a bit intoxicated, but not drunk, and the CT was fine, all the tests were fine, he was good to go.  Don't drive, call your family doctor if you experience dizziness, blurred vision, blah blah blah…

**ooo000ooo**

She had been in for how many hours now?  He'd asked Rey what time he'd come in, and Rey had said sometime around midnight.  So that would make it about three hours in the OR.  That wasn't that long, actually.  Felt like longer, because of the lateness of the hour, the time disorientation from the booze, the silence of them all, Linda, Mac, McCoy, Rey.  Felt like days.  But three hours in the OR wasn't that long.

Was that a good sign, that she'd been in three hours?  If she was as close to death as he'd thought when he first saw her, they wouldn't still be trying to save her, would they?

Or would they still be trying even though they were just saving a vegetable at this point?  Was she going to be alive, but pretty much gone?  Better off dead?

**ooo000ooo**

"She came to see me this afternoon," Mac said out of the blue.  None of them had said much about Claire, beyond the bare facts and Linda's wish that she could come to dinner more often.  There hadn't been much talking.  Mac and McCoy had started a desultory conversation about some legal issue going before the Supreme Court right now, to pass the time, but neither of them had been particularly interested in it and they'd petered off.  And now suddenly Mac had blurted this out.  Linda looked away, apparently having already heard about Claire's visit.

"Did she?"  McCoy asked.

"Yes.  Came into my class and stayed for a while afterwards."  McCoy nodded, impassive as he had been for most of this night.  McCoy hadn't looked terribly concerned to Lennie at first, but as Lennie's head cleared he'd been able to notice that he wasn't as blasé as he seemed at first glance.  That he was leafing through magazines without really seeing them, that he was forgetting to answer sometimes when one of them spoke to him, that he would get a distant look in his eyes and suddenly look old, weary beyond belief, and worried.  Not just worried, scared.

"She wanted to talk… she told me about the execution." McCoy heaved a deep sigh, closing his eyes.  "We argued.  I don't think I was very helpful…" Mac said softly, speaking almost to himself.  "She… she said that what she'd seen would be with her for the rest of her life."  Linda stood up suddenly and Mac looked up, startled, as she walked off, then quickly hurried to follow her.  Lennie and Rey glanced at each other as McCoy gazed after Mac and Linda and heaved another sigh, then wearily rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in hands.

It would be with her for the rest of her life.  It probably already had been.

**ooo000ooo**

McCoy was asking the nurse something.  Where's the chapel.

Why would McCoy want to know?

McCoy was going to the chapel.  Never figured McCoy for a religious person, but now was probably as good a time as any for him to pray.  Lennie felt a wave of remorse, knowing he was the cause of McCoy's pain.  Well, not really the cause, it wasn't like he'd actually killed Claire, but he was the reason she was in there right now.  The reason McCoy was going to the chapel.  What was that song, 'Goin' to the chapel and we're/Gonna get ma-a-arried…' Didn't know if McCoy and Claire ever woulda gone to that kind of chapel together, neither of them seemed like the marrying kind, but they definitely weren't going to now.  No, McCoy was going alone.  Either to pray for the impossible, for Claire to be OK, or to pray for strength to accept her death.

Rey was watching McCoy walk off with a look Lennie'd never seen on his face, an introspective, sorrowful look.  No idea why.  Come to think of it, why wasn't Rey going to the chapel himself?  Rey was the most devout person he'd ever met, like it was part of his identity.  Church and prayer and God were part of his life.  How he got through the day, how he raised his family, the basis of his belief system, his comfort, his strength, there all the time.  It was like the guy had a personal line to God.  And yet he hadn't made a move to the chapel or even crossed himself, and Lennie knew he liked and respected Claire Kincaid.  He should have been praying for her.  Instead he was watching McCoy walk off, then looking down, twisting his wedding ring, sighing and getting himself another cup of bad coffee.

Huh.

Lennie wished he was a praying man himself.  But he'd never really been much into religion.  It had been something to endure when he was a kid, when his mom was conscientiously bringing him up Catholic so the relatives who'd had a fit when she married a Jew wouldn't disown her, but she wasn't a big believer and neither was he.  And once he was past Confirmation, he'd sort of opted out with her blessing.  And then he'd married Jewish both times himself and half-heartedly gone along to synagogue a few times with his wives, neither one of whom was a big believer either.  Not opposed to it, just never really seeing much point in it.

He was more into the Church of Jack Daniels and the Synagogue of Smirnoff than anything else.  And he wouldn't have minded worshipping at either of those right now.

It was one of the things that had made AA so hard.  One of the things he'd had to fight against, his own innate agnosticism, when he was climbing the Twelve Steps.  Many of them involved asking God for help, recognizing that God, however you thought of Him, was the only one who could help you.  Step Two, come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.  Step Three, make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him.  On and on, God, God, God with a capital G.  Not his thing, normally.

One of the things he'd have to fight again, he supposed, assuming he wanted to climb those steps again.

Did he?

**ooo000ooo**

Head clear.  Pretty much sober.  Man, he hated hospitals.

Man, he hated being sober.

How sick was that.  All of this caused by his drinking, and all he really wanted was to have another drink.  Damn it.  He should've been in the OR, not Claire.  Claire wouldn't be out here selfishly wishing she could get drunk if he was at death's door.

McCoy had come back.  Linda and Mac had left briefly, whether for the chapel or just to get out of the ER, he didn't know.  Almost four.  'The hour before dawn, cops and roosters'.  And the parents of small children, Rey had added once.  Did Rey wake up with his kids at night?  Walk them back to sleep before dawn?  Did Jack, when his daughter was a baby?  He could picture Rey; he couldn't picture Jack, but you never knew.  He himself hardly ever had.  That had been his wife's job.  Once in a while she'd pushed him out of bed and he'd gone, complaining that he had to work the next day and needed his rest.  And she'd snapped back that she had to take care of the kids the next day and needed her rest too.  But it didn't happen too often.  She usually didn't care to fight over it.

And nights before a day off, when he couldn't have used the excuse of work the next day, he'd often been sleeping off a bender.

Yeah, he'd been a great daddy.

All of them, all of them gathered here, all parents of daughters.  Him, Jack, Rey, Linda, Mac, like a convention.  And he'd be willing to bet not one of them had fucked up or would ever fuck up their daughter's lives the way he had.  That not one of them had ever or would ever hear their daughter tell them she hated them.  With as much reason as his did.

That not one of them would deal with it by going back and doing exactly what had hurt their daughter in the first place.

That not one of them would be able to put someone else's daughter at death's door, and then spend a big part of a vigil for that daughter wishing he could just get drunk again.

**ooo000ooo**

Doctor coming.

Damn.

They could all tell.  Linda's downcast eyes and pale face, Mac's hand covering his mouth, McCoy's suddenly blank expression, Rey's faint sigh.  They could all tell.  Doctors don't look like that if it's good news.

He and Rey remained sitting as McCoy, Linda and Mac stood and listened to the doctor.  How many times had he delivered pretty much the same words the doctor was saying now?  I'm sorry to have to tell you, your daughter, son, wife, husband, sister, brother…  How many times had he witnessed the reactions of loved ones?  Tears, denial, anger, numbness… Lennie closed his eyes briefly, unwilling to witness Linda's grief, Mac's, McCoy's, as they processed the doctor's words, which he could barely hear.    Too much damage… internal hemmoraging… did our best.

Opened his eyes again.  He had caused this.  He shouldn't hide from it.  Don't be a coward.  A poem he sometimes thought of flitted through the back of Lennie's mind, a poem about a woman who is told her husband has been lost at sea.

It took the sea a thousand years  
A thousand years to trace  
The granite features of this cliff,  
In crag and scarp and base  
It took the sea an hour one night,  
An hour of storm to place  
The sculpture of those granite seams,  
Upon a woman's face

The things that you store in your memory.  A girlfriend in high school whose dad was a naval officer had loved that poem with the dramatic morbidity of a teenage girl.  And he'd remembered it, years later, as a Homicide detective, as the bearer of bad tidings.  Linda's face looked like that now.  McCoy's too.  Sculpture of those granite seams, etched in as they listened to the doctor wordlessly.  Living will… life support… organ donation.

Lennie closed his eyes.  God, I'm sorry.  Claire, I'm so sorry.  If I'd had more self-control you wouldn't be where you are.

Claire, I'm sorry.

God, I'd give anything for a drink right now.

Rey stood up and approached McCoy as the doctor left.  He exchanged a few quiet words with McCoy, then came back to Lennie's side.  McCoy looked away, eyes flat and expressionless, lost in thought.

"Let's go, Lennie," Rey said quietly.

Lennie stood and hesitantly approached Claire's parents.  He opened his mouth, not knowing what to say.  How to express his sorrow at having caused this.

"Lennie.  Thank you for staying with us," Linda said softly before he could speak, and Mac nodded, holding her close.  She turned to Rey, "Thank you too, Rey."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Rey murmured, "If there's anything we can do…"

"Thank you.  Thank you both.  Go get some rest," she said, patting Lennie's arm.

"Linda, I…" Lennie began.

"It's OK.  Don't blame yourself, please.  It wasn't your fault," she gave his arm a squeeze, then she and Mac turned away.  He and Rey left the hospital as Mac, Linda, and McCoy followed the nurse inside, to sign the necessary papers and say goodbye to Claire.

**ooo000ooo**

Back home.  Rey had insisted on going home with him, not that he'd put up a fight.  Not much said on the way to his place.

"You gonna be OK?" Rey asked.

"Yeah."

"Have some water before you-"

"I know how to deal with hangovers, thanks," Lennie interrupted him quietly, getting some aspirin while Rey got him a glass of water.  He'd had plenty of experience.  Four years since the last time he'd done this, but aspirin and water before bed wasn't that hard to remember.

"How are you feeling?" Rey asked.

"Fine," Lennie answered.  So quiet, everything quiet, their voices, the city, the apartment building… the hour before dawn, cops and roosters and people coming back from an all-night vigil at a hospital.

"I'll, uh, I'll give Van Buren a call tomorrow, let her know we'll be taking the day off," Rey said.

"Yeah."  Let her know I fell off the wagon, Lennie thought as he cut off the hospital bracelet.  Rey hadn't yelled at him all night long, and it looked like he wouldn't.  Who would've guessed Junior was capable of compassion for somebody who wasn't a child or a crime victim.  Although he supposed he was a crime victim – he'd been in an accident, and the other driver was drunk, and that made it a crime and him and Claire the victims.

No, Claire was the victim.  He was just a drunk along for the ride.

Whatever.  Whatever Rey's reasons for not being pissed off at him, they both knew he'd messed up badly and Rey would have to tell Van Buren.  And after that it was only a matter of time before he was out of the force.  Not too high a price to pay for his fuck-up.  Claire had paid a much higher price.

"You gonna be OK?" Rey asked again.

"Yeah."  He hadn't been able to look him in the eye for most of the night, and he still couldn't.  This kinder gentler Rey was even tougher to take than what he thought he'd be getting.  At least a righteously pissed off Rey would be something to react against, maybe make a few sarcastic comments to deflect his scorn.  He was helpless before solicitousness and compassion.

"Go home. Get some rest," he told Rey.  "And, uh… thanks."

"Don't mention it," Rey said.  "You get some rest too."

"Right.  Good night."

"Good night," Rey left the apartment.

Lennie sighed.  Alone.  As usual.

He wearily got into bed.

What a night.  What a couple of nights.

Vodka would make this all feel better.

He rolled over, groaned.  No.  No, no, no, he'd just caused a person's death because of alcohol, how could he want it again?

Go to sleep.  Just go to sleep, and make it all go away.  And don't even start to think about tomorrow.

**ooo000ooo**

**Author's Note:** The poem is by Newfoundland poet E.J. Pratt.


	4. Twelve Steps

**CHAPTER 4: TWELVE STEPS**

Oh. Lord.

This was why he stopped drinking. Because no matter how conscientious you were about taking aspirin the night before, the morning after was torture, pure and simple. The best you could hope for was hammer-in-your-head torture instead of chainsaw-in-your-head.

Sending him into further agony, the apartment and his head were rent in two by an earsplitting shriek, like a cat being mauled to death by other cats. That was the sound that had woken him up. What the hell was it?

The phone.

He better get it before his ears started to bleed.

"Hello?"

"Detective Briscoe, it's Lieutenant Van Buren," Van Buren began crisply, eviscerating Lennie's ears with her cool voice. He felt like she was screaming, but knew she really wasn't. "Have I called at a bad time?"

What? No of course not it's not a bad time, I was just sitting down to have some tea and crumpets with the Queen when my head exploded. "Uh, no, no," he managed to croak.

"I've been informed about the accident last night. Detective Curtis said you were unharmed?" He made an acknowledging sound. "I was also informed that you were drunk," she said bluntly.

Lennie sighed. "Yeah."

"Very well. I would like you and Detective Curtis to come to my office at 2:30 this afternoon."

"Yeah, OK. I'll be there," he replied quietly. She didn't sound pissed off, but she was like a parent who uses their child's full name to let the kid know they're in big trouble. He'd gotten the hint. Not Lennie, how about you and Rey come see me. Detective Briscoe. Leonard Walter Briscoe, when your father gets home you'll get what's coming to you, his mother used to say.

"I'll see you at 2:30 then," she hung up abruptly.

Crap. What time was it? 9:30a.m.

Ugh. His head was pounding. All of a sudden he felt like he was going to lose the breakfast he hadn't eaten yet, and he quickly got to the washroom and leaned over the sink. Nope, he was OK. Just felt nauseous.

So. 2:30 p.m. meeting with Van Buren. Rey must have let her know he'd been hammered the night before. He didn't envy the kid – he'd hate to have to rat out a partner, but it wasn't like he'd given Rey much of a choice. They both knew his history, and they both knew he couldn't work Homicide if he was drinking again.

Was there even a point to his showing up at this meeting? He knew what Van Buren would say. Couldn't he just mail in his resignation or something? Go mourn Claire's death and celebrate his newfound unemployment at a local tavern while Van Buren paired Rey up with a new partner?

Oh, come off it, Lennie, he gave himself a mental shake. Don't be more of a sap than you have to be. Show up, let Van Buren rail at you for a while, probably let Rey rail at you if he's finally over his weird bout of compassion, _then_ go to a tavern to mourn and celebrate.

Was that what he was gonna do? Get drunk as soon as he was fired?

Yeah, probably. Not much point in holding back, was there?

And what if he wasn't fired?

Right.

No, really. What if he wasn't fired?

Uh… then he supposed he'd try to not drink again. Right?

Sure. Talk about pie in the sky.

He took a sleeping pill and went back to bed, setting the alarm for 12:00 p.m.

**ooo000ooo**

Lennie walked into Van Buren's office, sighing as he took in her stern, disapproving expression. Yeah. This was it for his career. Within moments, Rey had joined them, looking tired and subdued. Van Buren waited until Rey was seated and launched into Lennie.

"We need to talk about what happened yesterday. Detective Briscoe, as you know, I am aware that you were intoxicated. I have serious doubts about your ability to work here if you are unable to keep yourself away from alcohol. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

What could he possibly have to say for himself? "No," Lennie replied flatly and felt Van Buren's glare grow even icier, if that was possible.

"No? That's it? You fall off the wagon and you just have no comment?"

To Lennie's surprise, Rey spoke up. "What's he supposed to say? You got a script you want him to follow?" he asked her belligerently. Lennie stared at him.

"I would like an explanation for his behaviour, Detective Curtis," Van Buren said coldly, "And when he's done I would like an explanation for yours."

What behaviour? But Van Buren was looking at him again. "Detective?" she prompted him.

Lennie sighed. Fine. What was there to say? "I wasn't feeling too good about the execution. Then I went and had lunch with my daughter and it didn't go great, so I had a few vodkas."

"That's it? This isn't making me feel confident in your ability to be steady enough to do your job."

"He wasn't drunk on the job," Rey pointed out. Huh?

"It's not your turn to speak, Detective Curtis."

"I don't see what you got us in here for if-" he started to say hotly, and she snapped at him, angry with him all out of proportion to his tone.

"Detective Curtis, if you can't control yourself any better than you did yesterday I suggest you go for a walk while I talk to your partner." Rey glanced at Lennie and pressed his lips together.

"Fine," he said tightly. Van Buren turned back to Lennie.

"What happened yesterday is inexcusable," she informed him coldly. "You are an alcoholic. The one thing you cannot do is consume alcohol. You are in a dangerous profession in which you need to have all your faculties clear. Your partner's life depends on your steadiness and self-control. I will not have you jeopardize your partner's life or your own by your conduct."

Yeah. This is not news, Lieu. Lennie stared at the floor. This is the part where you ask for my resignation. And where I say OK.

"I am tempted to ask you to hand in your resignation," Rey made a small sound of protest as Lennie kept his eyes on the floor. "Unfortunately I don't know what the PBA would say about that. I haven't talked to them yet, but I will once we finish this meeting."

Lennie nodded glumly. Yeah, talk to my PBA rep. And he'll either back you up all the way, 'cause he'll know that he's gotta protect other cops from a screw-up like me, or he'll say you have no right to railroad me over this… and he'll be full of it, 'cause you've got every right.

"Detective Briscoe?"

"Yeah," he muttered. What? What did she want from him?

"Do you think I should I ask for your resignation?"

Lennie shrugged. Why bother asking him? She'd obviously made up her mind before he walked in. There was a small silence. "Lennie. Do you think I should ask for your resignation?" she asked, her tone suddenly almost gentle.

Ah, crap, not you too, LT. He could deal with her anger, but if hard-ass Van Buren was gonna start being all soothing with him like Rey had been yesterday, he couldn't take that. Was he that pitiful, that tough cops like Van Buren and Rey felt they had to treat like he was made of glass?

"I dunno," Lennie muttered.

Rey cleared his throat and spoke up. "Do you mind if I talk for a minute?" Van Buren nodded. "LT… he made a mistake," he paused, and Lennie looked at him. "He's been sober for years, yesterday was a bad day, and he made a mistake. He deserves a second chance." This wasn't making any sense, thought Lennie as he stared at his partner, who apparently had grown another head in the last two days. "You do," he told Lennie gently.

"He had a second chance. And a third and a fourth. His record isn't spotless, Detective Curtis. There's only so many times you can get another chance," Van Buren pointed out firmly. She didn't seem so pissed off any more, but… she was right.

"Doesn't it make any difference that nothing like this has happened for years? We're not talking about him screwing up at work over and over and the last time was last week. We're talking about Lennie being sober for years, being a hell of a detective, with a hell of a close rate, and screwing up once, off the job, after watching an execution. He didn't break any laws. Nobody would've even known about it if it hadn't been for the accident. Which wasn't his fault," he added. He paused and Lennie thought over what he had just said. Put like that, it didn't sound that bad. "LT, don't fire him," he finished, "the punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Lennie considered Rey's words. This was one hell of a time to find out that Rey apparently did think highly of him, snide comments about his past, his ethics, and his age aside.

"Do you trust him to watch your back?" Van Buren asked Rey.

"Absolutely," Rey answered firmly, looking straight at Lennie. Absolutely? _I_ don't trust me absolutely, kid, thought Lennie. I don't trust me at all.

"Lennie?" Van Buren asked him.

"Where'd my regular partner, Pat Buchanan, go?" Lennie asked Rey. Rey smiled at him slightly.

"I just think you're a good cop. You don't deserve to get kicked off the force over this."

"Lennie? Can I trust you to not do this again?" Van Buren asked.

Oh hell. No, no you can't. I'm not even sure I want to keep trying to be sober. I'm not even sure about the whole Twelve Step thing. Of course you can't trust me. "I'd like to say yeah, but I woulda said that two days ago and I woulda been wrong," Lennie answered her, casting his eyes back down.

"Lennie, how long since you had a drink?" Rey asked.

Suddenly Lennie was pissed off. Not paying attention, are we, Junior? "One day," he snapped.

"I'm not talking about the AA count where the only thing that matters is the last time you drank. I mean for real, before yesterday, how long since you'd had a drink?"

"One day," Lennie repeated. "That's all that matters. There's a reason you start the count over whenever you drink, 'cause otherwise you tell yourself I've been sober five years, I only had one drink, and the one drink turns into two, and three, and then you're right back where you started. You're a drunk but you still think you've been sober for five years." Almost four years, in his case. Almost four years, gone, poof, just like that.

"Have you been going to AA meetings lately?" Van Buren asked him.

"Not really… I kinda got out of the habit," he admitted. Kinda didn't think I needed to any more.

"Then you need to get back in the habit," she told him. Lennie nodded. If that's what it took… was she seriously gonna give him another chance?

"I'll have to put this in your record. If you do this again…" Van Buren warned.

"Yeah. I know." Another black mark. He'd worked so hard to keep his record clean after sobering up. But hey, he supposed it was nice to still have a record to try to keep clean again.

"And I need you to promise to attend your meetings."

"Yeah." Back up the steps. My name is Lennie and I'm an alcoholic, Hi, Lennie.

"You're on very, very thin ice, Lennie."

"I know." No kidding. I thought I'd fallen through the ice already.

"OK. Contact your PBA rep, we'll set up a meeting and work something out."

Lennie nodded, not quite believing that he wasn't being fired.

"Detective Curtis," she turned to Rey. "What's your explanation for your own behaviour?" Rey hesitated and Lennie looked from one to the other. What behaviour? "Detective?" Van Buren prompted him.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry I didn't tell you?" Rey asked. Lennie felt his eyebrows climb to his hairline. What?!

"That would be a good start," Van Buren replied. Holy crap. Rey kept quiet?

"You didn't tell her?" Lennie asked, hearing the disbelief in his voice. Rey shook his head silently. Holy shit. Now I really do believe pigs will fly.

"No, I got to hear it from the investigating officer, which I shouldn't have," Van Buren informed Lennie. Right – he vaguely remembered a grey-haired lady uni. She turned back to Rey. "I will repeat what I said to you this morning, Detective, this is not a game. You are responsible for your partner's safety as well as your own. His behaviour if he relapses could seriously compromise his safety and yours, and you aren't doing anybody any favours by keeping quiet about it."

Rey nodded. Lennie frowned, wondering what Rey had been thinking, covering for him. Feeling bad that Rey was getting into trouble over this, that Van Buren was deeply pissed off at Rey, and rightfully so, because of him. Because Rey had tried to keep him out of trouble.

"I expect you to keep me informed if Lennie backslides. Do I make myself clear?" Van Buren demanded. Rey nodded. "Do either of you have anything else to say about this?" They both shook their heads. "Fine," Van Buren leaned back. "Lennie, I expect you to set up that meeting with your PBA rep, and I expect both of you to return to work tomorrow. That's all."

They both stood up quickly, grateful that they were done, and headed for the door. "One more thing," Van Buren added. "Jack McCoy called to let me know that Claire Kincaid's funeral will be tomorrow at the Ginghampton Funeral Home. 2pm."

Lennie nodded, shuddering inwardly. Claire's funeral. God. Barely thirty years old, being put into the ground or cremated or whatever. And all because he couldn't stay on the straight and narrow.

Damn it. Don't think like that.

Lennie watched Rey heading out and decided he couldn't leave things as they were. He hurried to catch up. "Rey, can we go for coffee?" he asked. Rey nodded, and they headed out of the precinct.

**ooo000ooo**

Much later, back home, Lennie mulled over his situation. He and Rey had gone for coffee and had a fairly superficial chat about what had happened. He'd been puzzled as hell by his young partner's behaviour - covering up for him, getting Van Buren to give him another chance… but he hadn't really gotten anywhere with him as far as figuring him out. Very frustrating.

He'd tried to apologize to Rey for getting him in trouble with LT, for LT making him Lennie's babysitter, but hadn't gotten very far with that either. Rey had just dismissed his apologies, told him not to worry about it.

Don't worry about it. Right.

He'd pointed out that his alcoholism could affect the job, said he'd understand if Rey didn't want to work with him… "Don't assume just 'cause you messed up one time that it's gonna happen again," Rey had said dismissively.

Which wasn't like Rey at all. He'd gotten the distinct impression, from that and from a few other things Rey had let slip, that maybe something was wrong with Rey, something had happened to him the day before. That there was some reason why he was acting like some kinda pod person had taken over him. But what? He'd found out that the execution had bothered Rey after all, but that was about all he'd found out.

_"Did it bother you?"_

_"Yeah."_

Oh well, thanks for opening up, kid. Good to know that with my life a mess and you getting ringside seats to the whole show, that now you can just let it all hang out and share, share, share. Did it bother you? Yeah.

He knew he was dwelling on Rey's puzzling behaviour as a way to avoid thinking about what he was going to do now.

Back to square one. Almost four years sober, screwed up, got drunk, back to the beginning again. And now everybody knew, his boss, his partner, Jack McCoy, and if the officer in charge had friends at the 27th they'd know too. And now he'd have to call the PBA, probably get put on some kind of probationary status, mandatory attendance at AA, checking in with Rey and Van Buren, like a child who can't be trusted to do what's right.

And this was all good. He should be grateful. It was better than being out of a job. Embarrassing as this was, it was better than what could have been. He'd just have to take it and get on with his life. He'd done it before.

Take it, Briscoe. You earned this. Nobody put a gun to your head and forced you into that bar. Little angel, little devil my ass, they were both just you and you could've let the little angel win.

So now here he was, trying to go back to sleep. Alone, just him, his splitting hangover, and his guilt over Claire Kincaid. And his need to have a vodka.

Don't think like that.

**ooo000ooo**

Naptime was all done. The hangover had lifted, and he was feeling almost human again.

OK. The Twelve Steps.

He sighed. Took out an old AA pamphlet. Sighed again as he read it over. It looked like a crock of bull, a simplistic fundie recipe for fixing broken lives. But it had worked for him before.

_Step One. Admit that you are powerless over alcohol._

Yeah, OK. No kidding. That one was easy, he was never under any illusion that he could just have a few. On the heels of every wish for Just one, just one, one is all I need to feel just a little better, always came the instant add-on: You know it's never just one. It never was just one, and it'll never be just one. Not for you.

_Step Two. Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity._

Step Two, a sticky wicket for him. A Power greater than yourself.

This was where being some kinda God-boy would come in real handy. But Lennie was far too cynical to be able to wholeheartedly believe in a higher Power. God, the Creator, whatever you chose to call him. He didn't disbelieve; it just wasn't something that played a major role in Lennie's life.

He let his mind wander, remembering a case he'd had once with Mike Logan. Some whacko cult leader had led a bunch of street kids into believing in him as "The Lamb" who would save them all from the fires of Hell. Lennie knew street kids, knew their hardened, ugly expressions. Knew the needle tracks, the air of extreme age these kids wore at sixteen, fifteen, fourteen. And this guy had turned their lives around, like a miracle worker. The kids were off drugs, clean, the girls in pretty dresses and the boys in shirts and ties. Of course they all looked kind of whacked out too, high off God instead of crack, but still. At least being addicted to God wouldn't land you in jail or in an alley selling yourself for a cheap high.

Lennie had been noncommittal about the whole thing. His general philosophy of life was Hey, whatever works for you. Mike, on the other hand, had a distinct opinion. He'd said something about how The Lamb took the kids off the street and then filled their minds with a bunch of religious garbage. Lennie, ready as always to play devil's advocate, had asked him curiously, "You sure it's garbage?"

Mike had good reason to be scornful. Mike wasn't so much a 'lapsed Catholic' as a 'bitter ex-Catholic'. Lapsed sounded like you just neglected to pay your fees and let your membership run out, like Lennie. Mike was more of a "tear up your membership card and burn it" kind of ex-Catholic. He'd answered Lennie with some comment about his mother holding a rosary in one hand while she beat the crap out him with the other, and asserted that the next time he was in a church, six of his closest buddies would be carrying him. Lennie had wisely backed off. Mike had had a horrific childhood, and bringing it up was no pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Lennie had found out later there was another reason Mike was no longer a member of the faithful. He'd had a priest put some moves on him as a boy and Lennie was pretty sure he'd been molested as well, though Mike hadn't elaborated and he hadn't asked. No wonder the guy wanted nothing to do with religion.

And yet, at the end of that case, when the crazy Lamb convinced his faithful followers to off themselves, as Mike and Lennie viewed the horror of all those young bodies spread out across the floor, it was Mike, not Lennie, who had crossed himself. Who had found some measure of comfort in a meaningless ritual meant to… what? Reassure himself of God's presence? Ask God to explain this evil? Call upon God to accept the souls of the dead kids? What?

The point was, Mike, who had more than enough reason to distrust religion, had turned to it at least in a minor way. Whereas Lennie, who had nothing against it, had difficulty going along with it, even when he knew he needed to. He felt awkward, kinda silly. It's hard, when your self-identity is that of a cynic, to embrace a being you can't even see, put your life in the hands of a 'higher Power' and be around other people who are talking about God without making irreverent smartass remarks.

Thinking of Mike, Lennie sighed again. Of the two of them, Mike should've been the alcoholic. He'd had no reason not to be. Raised by two drunks, viciously beaten by his mother for years, abused by a Catholic priest… he should've died of cirrhosis of the liver before he turned thirty. And yet, there he was. Lousy temper and allergic to romantic commitment, but otherwise decent, law-abiding, generally easy to get along with, and not addicted to a single thing except chewing gum and ugly ties.

And there was Lennie. No major trauma in his past. Born of a religiously mixed marriage, moved around a bit as a kid, bunch of slightly quirky relatives. Not a Norman Rockwell past, but no beatings, divorces, alcoholism, or anything. Dad got a little tipsy just about every Saturday night at his poker game, but he didn't take it out on anybody and it never affected his job or his family.

And Lennie had guzzled booze like nobody's business. Drank his way through the destruction of his family and near-destruction of his career. And he was still turning to the bottle when things got tough.

And now he was supposed to do all this shit again to make sure it never happened again. He could feel himself stumbling on the second step. He skimmed through the pamphlet.

_3. Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him._

_4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself._

_5. Admit to God, to yourself and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs._

_6. Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character._

_7. Humbly ask Him to remove your shortcomings._

_8. Make a list of all persons you harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all._

_9. Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others._

_10. Continue to take personal inventory and when you are wrong promptly admit it._

_11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God as you understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for you and the power to carry that out._

_12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all your affairs._

Spiritual awakening. Man, he was too old for this crap.

Rey and Van Buren seemed to assume he was going to get back on the wagon. They didn't know what it meant. They didn't know how much he wanted to drink, to blur everything away, to feel better in the easiest way he knew how. They didn't know that the night before had not only reminded him of how awful things were when he drank, it had also reminded him of why he used to drink in the first place. Because it felt good to let go. Because it felt good to relax, not have to think about his daughter, not have to feel guilty about everything he'd screwed up in his life. Because it was an easy out.

It was too easy. It was too seductive. He needed a good solid reason to fight that seductive pull.

Other people beat the bottle for their wives, their children. He didn't have that any more. There wasn't really any reason, anybody to do this for. If he decided he couldn't be bothered, it wouldn't be a big loss to the world. Van Buren would get another detective, Rey would get another partner, and that would be that. The only person who would be affected would be him.

He knew that if he threw in the towel, he would have to tell Rey and Van Buren. There could be no hiding from them; they had given him their trust, Rey especially, literally putting his life on the line. And Van Buren, well, she could very well be putting her career on the line too. If he screwed up, and it came out that she had allowed an alcoholic with his record to continue on the force, in a demanding job with at least two lives depending on his sobriety, she could very well lose her position too.

He mulled for a few more minutes, staring at the pamphlet, then turned it over, picked up the phone, and punched in the numbers he'd scribbled on the back of the pamphlet so many years ago.

"Clemente residence," answered a pleasant female voice.

"Hi, Annie, it's Lennie. Do you know if Phil's around?"

"Lennie? Oh, hello! Long time no hear. Yeah, Phil's right here, hang on," Lennie heard the sound of the phone being put down and Annie's voice calling Phil.

"Lennie? Mah man, howzigoan?" a deep voice with a thick accent that Lennie had never for the life of him been able to place came on the line.

"OK, Phil. Yourself?"

"Cain't complain, cain't complain," Phil answered. "No use complainin' anyway, nobody listens."

Lennie chuckled, then was silent for a moment, unsure of what to say. Ah, might as well come right out. "Uh, this isn't a social call. You busy?"

"Ya'll fall off?" Phil asked immediately, genial manner still in place. Lennie chuckled wryly. Phil had a sixth sense about this. Of course, considering Phil was his AA sponsor and he was calling him out of the blue after months of no contact, it wasn't that big a leap to make.

"Yeah."

"Right. Want me to come over?"

"Nah, that's OK…" Lennie said, wishing he would. But no, that would be ridiculous.

"Lennie, Lennie, Lennie," Phil sighed. "Ya know, it's eight o'clock. Not that late. I've come over later. What time didja call me over that one time? Three in the morning? This here's peanuts. Besides, I gotta go return a video anyway, I'll drop by your place on my way back."

**ooo000ooo**

"So what happened, man?" Phil asked once they were seated in Lennie's kitchen with a coffee cup before each of them.

"I just drank, that's all."

"That ain't all there was to it."

"OK, I ordered a vodka, lifted the glass, tilted it so the vodka could go down my throat-"

"Yeah, yeah, Lennie, thanks for the wiseass routine," Phil cut him off with a smile. "And now…"

"I dunno."

"You dunno what?"

"I just don't know."

"You don't know about gettin' back on the straight 'n narrow again."

Lennie sighed. "How'd you know? Everybody else just seems to assume I'm gonna."

Phil chuckled. "Lemme guess. They ain't friendsa Bill W."

"Nah."

"So they dunno know it's a bitch. They ain't got a clue." Phil laughed softly, shaking his head. "What happened?"

"I uh… I went to this execution. You know Mickey Scott?"

Phil shook his head again and frowned, slightly puzzled. "I din' know New York had the death penalty. Really?"

"Yeah, dipstick, we got it a while ago. And Pataki's the Governor, didja know that?"

"Pataki? My dry cleaner?"

Lennie smiled. Phil wasn't the most educated or politically aware person he knew, but he was a good guy. "So anyway we went, and I had a tough time with it."

"Huccome?"

Lennie thought for a moment, holding his cup. "He just died. He… he just died. People are supposed to die when their bodies give out or something. Not like he did."

"Ain't you a murder police or something?"

"Yeah."

"Kinda weird somebody dyin' would bug you." Lennie shrugged. "And then?"

"Then I had lunch with my kid."

"Ah." All the understanding in the world was in that one syllable.

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"Cathy." Phil nodded. "I screwed up. I screwed up so big with her when she was a kid. And… and there's no way to make up for it."

"And that gotcha thinkin' if there ain't no way to make up for it, why bother tryin' not to drink?"

"Something like that."

"So you fell off."

"Yeah."

"So whatcha gonna do now?"

"I wish that's all there was to the story."

"There's more?"

"Oh yeah, the fat lady hasn't sung yet."

"Why? What else happened?"

"This girl I work with – worked with – she saw me at a bar, drunk, and she offered to drive me home. And then we got in an accident. She's dead." That hurt, saying it. Claire Kincaid, dead.

Phil gave a low whistle. "Shit holy."

"Yeah," Lennie sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

"And?"

"And… and you know what I spent almost the whole time at the hospital thinking while she was dying?" he said slowly.

"I wanna vodka."

"Give the man a cigar," Lennie sighed, nodding. Damn pathetic.

"Yer an alcoholic."

"I know."

"And that's whatcha want. It's what yer body tells you you need."

"I know, I know. It's just this girl… she's not even cold and I'm wishing I could forget her with some booze."

"I know."

"So now I dunno."

They were silent for a moment. "Say you don't fight it," Phil mused. "Say you go ahead and do what you want."

"Say I do."

"You gonna go back to work, hope ya don't kill somebody else?"

"Nah. If I'm not gonna stay off the sauce, I can't work."

"Who's gonna know?"

"My partner's not that dumb. Little young, but he's not an idiot."

"You could hide it."

Lennie thought for a moment, looking down into his coffee. He probably could. "Nah. He's got a wife, three little kids. I drink, I might shoot him by accident some time when we're trying to take somebody down."

"So if you drink, yer gonna tell?"

"Yeah. And then I'll lose my job. I almost did already."

"OK. Then whatcha gonna do?"

"Dunno."

"You close enough to retirement?"

"Not really."

"You'd survive. Welfare, disability, whatever, you'd survive, fer a while at least."

"Probably."

"Here's how I see it. From what I remember, near the end you was a real mess. Not a 'high-functioning alcoholic' no more. You was missin' work, falling down wasted, the works."

"You're making it sound so attractive," Lennie remarked.

"Yer not so young, either. You fall back into the bottle, and yer gonna do yourself some major damage. Your liver… it cain't bounce back forever."

"No."

"Keep drinking and yer gonna be dead in a couple years," Phil said, and paused.

"But what a way to go, huh?" Lennie quipped, and they shared a smile.

Phil ran a hand through his hair. "So why not? Why'dja stop before?"

"I dunno. I was tired of living like that. You know, being a screw-up at work, throwing up every morning… hangovers."

"Say howdy to all that again. Except no, you wouldn't be working, so that wouldn't be a problem. And ya cain't have a hangover if yer still drunk, right?"

"Yeah. That woulda been real nice this morning," he remembered the bloodcurdling shriek of the phone.

"I bet. So why fight it?"

"I don't know. I don't have a wife or family to stop for. There's really not much."

Phil sipped his coffee for a moment, regarding him seriously over the rim of the cup. "You want I should remind you?"

"Shoot."

"You fight it for you. That's the only person you can fight it for. Yer all you got, man. Comes down to you. Always."

Lennie nodded. It came down to him. So he needed to decide, and keep deciding every day, whether he was worth fighting for.

He couldn't undo the damage he'd done to Cathy, he couldn't bring Claire back to life, he couldn't do anything about any of his past, and he didn't have anybody who would be seriously affected by his sobriety or lack thereof.

Going back to AA would be uncomfortable as hell and it would take willpower and perseverance. Going back to work with Rey and Van Buren would also be difficult to cope with. He was going to have to keep fighting every single day to deal with it and not drink away discomfort or difficulty, and he had no reason to do any of it other than himself.

So it came down to him. Was he worth it?


	5. Funeral

**CHAPTER 5: FUNERAL**

Back to work.

No new cases to catch today. Just a whole crapload of leads to follow from currently open cases. Rey was already there, of course, not a hair out of place, working the phone, and he greeted him and took out a file. He looked at his notes.

Anderssen: _'Super, vent? 555-0386'_. The super in the building had said Anderssen asked him to fix a heating vent the day of the murder, but hadn't known at what time. He'd offered to check his log, but hadn't gotten back to Lennie yet. Better call him back.

Also Anderssen: _'Neighbour TV? 555-3718'_. His neighbour said she'd been watching TV at the most probable time of the murder. The neighbour hadn't mentioned that she used to date Anderssen – the super had told them that. Better call her back and ask what show she was watching. Ask it casually, just trying to establish a timeline, not like she's under suspicion, and don't forget to ask if it was a rerun or a new episode.

Nelligan: _'Prints?'_ "Rey, did you get the prints from the lab for Nelligan?"

"Uh, no, I thought you were getting them," Rey answered distractedly, scribbling in his notepad.

"No." He looked at the date – the lab had been called twice already. He sighed, feeling weary.

"Here, I'll do it," Rey offered.

"Thanks." There was a pause for a moment, and Lennie rubbed his eyes. Not even ten o'clock and his head was already starting to throb.

A little whiskey would take that away, said a small, sly voice.

Shut up.

"Lennie, you OK?" Rey's voice broke through his brief internal dialogue.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," he muttered. "I just have a headache."

Rey looked at Lennie, worried. He didn't look fine. He couldn't possibly still be hung over from the other day, but he looked… old. As much as Rey teased Lennie about his age, Lennie didn't usually look old. He normally wore his age well, and his expression was usually one of cynical amusement. This just wasn't like him. He looked downtrodden, weary, had no sense of humour. Rey suddenly felt a prickle of suspicion. What if Lennie wasn't just tired or upset, but actually hung over again?

No. Of course not. He couldn't be. He was just tired, probably still feeling the effects of the last couple of days, feeling sorrow or guilt over Claire's funeral today.

Right. Back to work.

**ooo000ooo**

Lennie sighed. Again. It was turning into one of those days – when nobody's home to return calls, people you're depending on aren't doing their jobs, and nothing's working out.

"Ah, fuck this," he muttered, and got up to get himself a coffee. He could feel Rey's eyes following him with concern, knew he wasn't behaving the way he usually did. For one thing, despite being a cop and being around often foulmouthed criminals and coworkers, Lennie didn't usually feel the need to swear. Especially not for something as minor as finding out that prints pulled from what had looked like an easy crime scene didn't match their main suspect after all. Usually all that rated was a sarcastic quip that Rey wouldn't react to.

OK. Get a grip. He sipped his coffee, returning to his desk.

"Lennie? You OK?" Rey asked quietly.

"Yeah, I'm fine, but this-" he bit back another expletive, "uh, this Salinas case just went down the toilet." He filled Rey in on the info from the lab.

"Damn," Rey said when he was done, "I really thought we had that guy."

"Yeah, well, think again," Lennie sighed. Rey waited for a Lennie-ism, but there was nothing. Just Lennie burying his face in the file again, looking for clues.

"I'm gonna go get a hot dog or something – you wanna take a break?" Rey asked, hoping to jar Lennie out of his bad mood. Lennie could always be counted on to brighten up at the mere mention of food.

"Nah, you go ahead. I know there's something in here…" Lennie said distractedly, poring over the file. Rey felt a pang of alarm.

"Want me to get you anything?"

"Yeah, sure, hot dog, whatever," Lennie replied, still reading. Thank God. If Lennie actually turned down his offer, he'd seriously consider taking him aside and asking him point blank if he had been drinking again the night before. Still, it wasn't like Lennie to be so casual about food. A normal request for a hot dog should be followed by, 'and don't skimp on the relish, and none of that low fat mayonnaise crap'. 'Whatever' was just not a word Lennie ever associated with food.

**ooo000ooo**

Later, hot dogs consumed and absolutely no progress made on any of their cases, Lennie sighed for the umpteenth time that morning.

"Lennie? You doing OK?"

"Yeah."

Rey checked his watch. "It's almost one o'clock. We should get ready to go to the funeral."

"Right." The funeral of the young girl I helped put into the ground. That'll be a real treat.

"You sure you're all right?"

"Rey, cut it out. You don't do nursemaid real well," Lennie snapped. This was getting really tired. Rey had been overly polite, looking at him like he was gonna break, offering to do stuff for him… it was really getting on his nerves. He was just tired and out of sorts, he wasn't that pathetic, he didn't need this… whatever the hell it was.

The worst part was that he'd also caught a couple of slightly suspicious looks from Rey over the course of their morning. Like he was worried not only about Lennie's mood, but about Lennie drinking. This was a hell of a working relationship – he was out of sorts but he couldn't really act it out in peace, because 'out of sorts' looked like 'hung over' and his partner had been told to keep an eye on him in case he slipped back into a bottle.

And Lennie had nobody to thank for that but himself. If his partner was having doubts about his sobriety, it was entirely Lennie's fault.

"Sorry," Rey muttered, looking chastened.

Ah, crap. Lennie felt like he'd just kicked a puppy. He closed his eyes for a moment. Get past this, apologize, don't think about how awkward this is and how much easier it would be if you just had a little booze to loosen you up. "No, I'm sorry. Let's go."

**ooo000ooo**

Ginghampton Funeral Home: soft flute music playing, flowers, tastefully subdued funeral home attendants with tastefully subdued voices and tastefully subdued smiles. And there were Claire's parents, McCoy, Van Buren, Adam Schiff, and a bunch of other lawyers he'd seen around Hogan Place. Mostly ADA's, some defense attorneys too. They went and sat with Van Buren.

Claire's parents. Lennie still couldn't look at them. Although at the hospital they'd both been gracious and reassured him that they didn't blame him, the fact was that he was the cause of their loss. He didn't know if he could have faced the person who caused the death of one of his children without wanting to shoot them, whether it was their fault or not.

He also knew from experience that grieving families went through several conflicting emotions after the death of a loved one. A mother who was forgiving at the moment of her child's death might very well change completely overnight. He was going to have to face them anyway and hope neither one of them tried to kill him.

And McCoy. He was going to have to face McCoy too, if not today, then eventually, in the course of their job. He wondered if McCoy would take time off to deal with Claire's death. Probably not – McCoy was one of the most driven and obsessive people he'd ever met, and he would probably just bury himself even further in his work, if that was possible.

"This is play, pure and simple, I bet you didn't think I had it in me," McCoy had proclaimed drunkenly just two days ago. And look what had happened. He probably wouldn't be doing that again for a while.

Or he might do it a lot more often. Lennie wondered, not for the first time, if McCoy would deal with Claire's loss by dropping into a bottle himself. Then he mentally reprimanded himself for, what was it Mike had once accused him of, 'seeing a drunk behind every bush'.

The funeral director, a nice motherly-looking lady, got up at the podium, welcomed them, and launched into the eulogy. "We all like to think well of the dead. In this profession, we often come across people who are eulogized in death and whose lives are whitewashed to an extent that makes them unrecognizable to those left behind. And those of us who try to find out a little bit about the deceased become rather cynical, used to hearing the half-truths, the little sidesteps of the real person in an effort to make them seem like saints."

Not unlike detectives, Lennie thought. Ugliness comes out most of the time after you're talking to people about the deceased for the second or third time. The funeral director was saying that this hadn't been the case with Claire, and was pointing out all the ways in which Claire really had been as good as she seemed at first glance. How she'd taken on a job at the DA's office even though she could've made more money as a defense attorney. How she always tried to stand up for what was right.

"On the last day of her life, Claire Kincaid witnessed an execution. She went because she felt she had an obligation to do so. She had helped to convict a man, helped to bring him to the executioner's table, and she felt she had to witness for herself what her actions had helped to bring about. And this in spite of the fact that Claire didn't agree with the death penalty, that she had argued against it, that if she had had a choice that man would not have been executed."

Lennie remembered how passionate Claire had been about the death penalty. What was it her stepfather had said – she'd told him what she'd seen that day would be with her for the rest of her life.

Damn it. They shouldn't have gone, none of them should have gone. They should have just stayed home, like Van Buren. Their going hadn't had a single positive result. Mickey Scott was dead, Claire was dead, McCoy was alone, he had lost the one thing in his life he'd worked the hardest to gain, his sobriety… his partnership with Rey was in the crapper…

They shouldn't have gone. None of them should have gone.

The funeral director was wrapping up. "The world needs more people like Claire Kincaid. She will be sorely missed, not only for her warmth and her caring, but for her courage and conviction. She will be missed, not only by her friends and family, but by all of those people in this world who need someone like her to fight for their rights, for justice, for a better world."

A better world. One where people like Mickey Scott are never born, never rape and murder young women, one where they don't get put to death by the State and where the chumps who go to see that death don't have their own lives go to hell because of it.

**ooo000ooo**

After the funeral, Lennie, Rey and Van Buren got themselves coffees. McCoy joined them for a few moments. Lennie concentrated on his coffee while McCoy chatted briefly with Van Buren, pricking up his ears when he heard his name. Van Buren was telling McCoy that Claire had come to the precinct the day she died, to talk to him.

"Why'd she wanna talk to me?" he asked, curious.

"I think it was probably about the execution."

Lennie nodded. Damn it. Damn it, damn it. There was no way he could have known, but if he'd been there, if he'd just been at the precinct instead of out getting drunk… Damn it.

Don't think about how much less painful this would be if you were out getting drunk again. Just don't think that way.

"What did she say?" McCoy asked.

"We talked about the system," Van Buren told him. "Dealing with people's lives, knowing how much our jobs affect them. How we each cope with that." McCoy nodded and Lennie suppressed a sigh. Well, as far as he knew Van Buren and Rey seemed to have coped OK, though he wasn't sure about Rey. Claire had agonized, and he and McCoy had gone and gotten plastered. Good coping.

"She was having a hard time with it," Van Buren said.

"I know," McCoy said, his voice distant.

"McCoy… if there's anything we can do…"

"Yeah. Thanks," McCoy excused himself and after a short pause, Van Buren cleared her throat and turned to Lennie.

"Lennie? Did you call the PBA rep?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. How's Monday sound?" He'd called his rep, Larry, earlier in the day and Larry had said Monday was good for him.

"Fine."

"Two o'clock?" Van Buren nodded. "Just so you know… I don't, uh, I don't have a problem with what you said."

"Which part?"

"The PBA rep said I could make a case that you can't make me go to AA or check in with you, but I don't have a problem with it." They'd had a very brief conversation, which Lennie had cut off in disgust because Larry had very quickly demonstrated he didn't know his ass from his elbow when it came to alcoholism.

"OK."

"Just set it up however you want."

Van Buren paused for a second, then said hesitantly, "Lennie… I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm not trying to belittle you."

"I know." Oh, not this sympathy crap again. He'd rather be forced to eat a tub of salad greens with low-fat dressing than get that voice from his coworkers.

"I'm just worried about you. You're a damn good detective, I don't want to lose you to a bottle."

"I know. Thanks," he said awkwardly, feeling warmed by her words and her concern despite his discomfort and annoyance at her solicitous tone.

Rey cleared his throat. "Want me there too on Monday?"

"Yeah, might as well," he said heavily. Let's bring Profaci in too, he thought, and while we're at it, why not videotape the whole thing and show it to the precinct at the next departmental party?

No, that wasn't fair. Rey had a right to be there. And he'd been pretty helpful at yesterday's 'raking over the coals' session. Van Buren excused herself and went to pay her respects to Claire's parents, and a few minutes later, he and Rey went to pay their respects too.

**ooo000ooo**

Later, back at the precinct, Lennie took a breather before plunging back into drudgery, trying to shake the mood he'd been in all day. Rey had gone off to follow a couple of leads in person, giving Lennie a break from his watchful presence. He took a moment to get himself a cup of water at the cooler, reflecting on the funeral and on the last few days.

He suddenly realized that at some point during the day, he'd decided not to throw in the towel. It wasn't a simple decision – and it would have to be made over and over again, every single day – but it was a start.

He thought again about his conversation last night with Phil.

_"Why'dja stop before?"_

_"I dunno. I was tired of living like that. You know, being a screw-up at work, throwing up every morning… hangovers."_

It hadn't just been that, though. It had also been the despair, the damn near suicidal feeling of hopelessness that accompanied being so out of control. Knowing that you were completely powerless to function day to day without this poison that was killing you, killing everything you cared about.

And not just 'damn near' suicidal feelings, either. Phil hadn't brought it up, hadn't needed to. Phil knew he just needed to get the ball rolling and Lennie would come to it eventually: the fact that at some points during his sodden existence he _had_ been suicidal. Not actively, not obsessively or constantly, but there had been days when he'd really wondered what was the point of going on. Being drunk all the time was really no way to live. It was a way to die. Slowly, incoherently, and often thinking you were having a great time while you were doing it, but it was a way to die nonetheless.

And there had been that one night that Phil had alluded to, when he'd called Phil at three in the morning. When the night had been just way too long to get through without either a whole bottle of vodka or a bullet to the temple. He and Phil hadn't talked about it much that night either, but Phil had known what he was thinking, where he was going. He'd gotten a laconic, "Lennie, it ain't worth dyin' for," at one point during the night, and it had been true then and it was true now.

Alcohol wasn't worth dying for. And it wasn't worth living for either. The life of a drunk wasn't good enough for him. He was better than that.

Comes down to you, Phil had said.

It came down to him.

So what was he? The funeral director had said that the world needed more people like Claire Kincaid. Did the world need more people like Lennie Briscoe?

What was he? For one thing, he was a good cop. The world needed more of those. Somebody had to protect and to serve, and although Lennie generally took his job with a grain of salt and was under no illusions that he was out single-handedly saving the world, he knew that he did make the world just a little bit safer at the end of the day. Somebody had to catch and put away the Mickey Scotts of the world. Maybe not help to kill them, but at least put them away.

And as a person? He knew he was generally pretty easy to get along with, although you wouldn't find a CSU tech in New York who thought so. He'd been told he had a good sense of humour. He had lots of casual friends and some close ones. And ever since he'd sworn off marriage, he'd also had a string of women who had passed in and out of his life, not frequently enough for his liking, but at least semi-regularly, and when they were gone they usually seemed to leave with fond memories of him.

Not such a bad guy. Not such a bad life.

It could be worse. It had been worse. A lot worse.

He was worth enough, was good enough, for two people to have put their trust in him. That wasn't nothing. Somewhere in the last year he'd gained Rey's respect and trust, and somewhere in the last three he'd earned Van Buren's. That meant something. They had trusted him enough to give him another chance. He shouldn't fuck it up.

As for Claire… nothing would ever erase his sorrow over her death, or his feeling of guilt. But her parents were right, and they had repeated at the funeral home what they'd said at the hospital. He wasn't to blame. There was a difference between being responsible for killing a person and just having done something stupid in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

And as for his daughters, as for Cathy… well, he'd have to work on that. One step at a time.

He threw his paper cup into the trash can, went back to his desk, glanced at a file, and picked up the phone.

**ooo000ooo**

**Author's Note:** If anybody wants the actual script for Aftershock, e-mail me at


End file.
